


Nine

by MissHaveaChat



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Eventual Fluff, Eventual Smut, F/F, Internalised homophobia (don't worry - she'll get past it!), Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington Are Best Friends
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:55:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 44,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28307127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissHaveaChat/pseuds/MissHaveaChat
Summary: This fic answers the two most pressing questions on my mind at the end of Stranger Things, Season Three: 'Just how many kids were they experimenting on in that lab?' and 'When is Robin Buckley going to find the love she so richly deserves?'
Relationships: Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington, Robin Buckley/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 68
Kudos: 54





	1. Steve the Popcorn King

The first thing that happened, two months and sixteen days after StarCourt, was that Steve ‘the Hare’ Harrington, broke his own record and achieved a 98% accuracy rate for catching popcorn in his mouth. The second thing that happened, was that things began to get interesting again.

Robin’s summer had divided itself pretty neatly between a tedium so deep she sometimes wondered if she would notice if the difference between actual death and the living death of life in small town America and a persistent sense of generalised dread which she didn’t seem to be able to shake. Then, sometimes, inserting itself between re-cataloging New Releases as Three Day Hires and the reoccurring nightmares of her best friend screaming, out of reach, in the darkness was a moment like this one.

Steve is face up on his back in the window display, buried under New Releases and wrestling with a life-size cardboard cutout of Phoebe Cates. He’s whooping as if he’s scored the winning goal in the Super Bowl and utterly failing to get up, because they’d decided to build a pyramid of videos in the front window and they’d been really bored and made it huge, so there is literally a thousand cases on top of Steve and he’s kind of scrabbling and flailing. Robin would help him, but she’s laughing so hard that all she can do is slide down the Family Video counter and weep.

Robin has been crunching the numbers on Steve’s olympic popcorn catching attempt for about two weeks now. For a while there he’d plateaued at a 95% catch rate, but today things had turned a corner. One catch away from breaking through to the next percentile Steve had thrown wide and made a desperate bid to save the situation, hurling his whole body under the popcorn as it arced through the store. The kernel had bounced off his forehead and into his open mouth as he skidded across the floor and into the window display. It was the look on his face as he simultaneously choked on the popcorn and saw the first video in the tower fall in slow motion that broke Robin. Now even sitting on the floor with her back against the counter is beyond her; she is flat on the floor, arms and legs thrown out like a starfish, trying not to expire, trying to breath, in great hiccuping gasps, through her laughter.

“Oh my God. Oh my God.”

“Yassss!” Steve pumps his fist in the air through the pile of videos and then begins choking again.

Groaning, Robin hauls herself up and crawls over to him on all fours. She pulls him up by his t-shirt and begins thumping him hard on the back. This is not gonna be the day she has to explain to a paramedic why Steve needs resuscitating.

“Just breathe buddy.” Whack! “You got this.” Whack! The mangled piece of corn flies out his mouth, narrowly avoiding Robin and sticks itself to a poster of _The Care Bears Movie_. There is no way she is cleaning that. She gives him another whack for good measure.

“Ow! Geez Rob! OW!” 

“Don’t be a baby. If the flesh-monster from another dimension didn’t get you, it doesn’t seem right to let the out-of-date Crunch ’n Munch take you out.” As soon as the words leave her mouth Robin feels like the bottom is dropping out of her stomach because she tries, oh she tries so hard, not to think about that deep sinkhole of steaming shit and pain and fear that has somehow made its way into her soul, but the very second she relaxes and lets her guard down, there it is.

Steve has flopped back into the mound of videos, unawares of Robin’s momentary descent into madness. He looks completely happy, like this is the crowning achievement of his eighteen years.

“Okay Champ, you gonna help me with this?” Robin begins to stack the fallen videos in piles.

“Nah. I think I’ll just take a minute to enjoy this moment, you know?” Steve covers his face with his arms as Robin throws the empty case from _Old Yeller_ at him.

“Get up dingus!” She tries to get him with _Gremlins_ , but he rolls out of the way and up on to his knees, videos cascading off him.

“Okay, okay!” He begins to clear a space around himself. “Just tell me, honestly, was that not the best and most epic thing you ever saw in your life?”

“As compared to, say, Sandra Day O’Connor becoming the first female Supreme Court Justice?”

“Yeah.”

“And Sally Ride going to space?”

“Yeah.”

“And Ally Sheedy in _The Breakfast Club_?”

“Yes! God you are _such_ a lesbian.”

She hits him in the arm first and then waits a beat before saying. “Yeah, it was pretty great.”

He grins, holding a copy of _Son of Flubber_ like a trophy and speaking into an imaginary microphone.

“I’d like to thank my coach and mentor, Robin Buckley - Rob I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“You are such a dork.” He dodges away as she ruffles his hair and they turn towards the window, contemplating the damage to the window display. It is, undeniably, a catastrophe. If they can’t figure out how to prop it up, they are going to have to explain to Keith why the Phoebe Cates cutout is all bendy in the middle. Robin is all for blaming it on Steve’s kids.

“That guy’s there again.” Steve has stalled, a copy of _Footloose_ in one hand.

“Huh?” There’s an edge to his voice that makes Robin turn. She looks in the direction Steve is looking.

“In the black jacket. He was there all yesterday. Like the whole day.” There is a depressing little patch of grass with a few trees opposite the Family Video parking lot. Sure enough, a man in a black jacket, face hidden by a baseball cap is sitting on a park bench; with a black bag beside him.

Robin thinks. “He was there on Wednesday too.” Her voice feels too loud. She can hear _Gone with the Wind_ playing on the store TV. Scarlett is being sassy at Rhett.

Steve looks at her. His face is serious and his eyes are wide. 

“I think he’s watching us.”

Robin feels the dread pushing against the walls she has spent so much effort building. She feels it seep through cracks she didn’t know were there. She feels it pouring in, she feels it filling her up. She can’t breathe. The guy is staring straight at Family Video.

—

Robin can tell that Steve is literally dying to talk to her about Mr-Stranger-Danger-Park-Bench-Watcher-Guy and that he’s probably also busting to call Dustin and set the whole conspiracy-band-wagon-team-thing rolling again. Heck, he’d probably even settle for calling Erica. She can also tell that he can tell that she’s disintegrating into a million pieces by the way he says nothing and keeps shooting worried glances her way every two minutes. He’s re-shelving videos so sometimes he has to pop his head up over the shelves or round the ends of the rows to do this. It would be really funny except for there is somehow no air reaching her lungs, no matter how hard she sucks it in.

She stays behind the counter, not saying a word, bracing herself, one hand gripping the counter-top to keep herself upright for the rest of the shift. From this vantage point she has a clear view of their black-clad observer, yes he is definitely watching them — she can tell by the angle of his baseball cap, even though his face is hidden. Robin wonders if it makes it worse that he doesn’t seem to care that they can see he’s watching them and then realises that yes, it makes it so much worse. She’s torn between trying not to look at him and feeling like if she takes her eyes off him for a second he’ll vanish and then reappear suddenly with his face pressed against the Family Video window, like a B-Grade horror movie. She checks to see if the trash can is within reach, because there is a very real possibility that somewhere in the process of loosing her damn mind, she’s going to throw up.

By the time Steve begins closing up for the night, the pile of returns next to her has somehow moved to the re-shelving trolley, but she has no idea if she entered them into the system. Steve has essentially done all the work for the both of them, which she would normally feel bad about, but she is completely out to lunch, what with the terror and all. Steve switches off the overhead lights and comes to stand beside her, keys in hand. The store is still and lit only by the neon ‘New To Video’ sign in the window. Outside, darkness is falling, the days getting shorter as summer draws to a close. The man is still sitting on the park bench.

“Do you think it’s safe to go outside?” Steve asks. Robin hadn’t thought of that. What if the man is just waiting for an opportunity to grab them and stuff them in the trunk of his waiting car at gunpoint and drive them to an undisclosed location or a bunker or a _fucking secret Russian base built under a fucking shopping mall?!_ Should they stay in Family Video? But then they’d be sitting ducks, because the second the arcade next door closes for the night and everybody goes home he can smash his way in through the plate glass window and drag them out anyway. They could make a run for it through the back door, but there isn’t a window in the back of the building, so there’s no way to know ifthere’s someone coving that exit too. They’re trapped. Holy fucking shit balls; they’re _trapped._

“Rob! Robin! Rob!” Steve has his hands on her shoulders and is shaking her gently. She turns to stare into his big brown eyes and his stupid worried face and begins to come back to herself.

“Sorry.”

“You went catatonic. I was waving my hand in front of your eyes and everything. I thought I was going to have to slap you or something.”

“Try it and I’ll take you out.”

The man outside gets up and walks purposefully away. Robin and Steve watch him go.

“I’m going to drive you home. We can lock your bike in the store.”

Robin doesn’t argue, just grabs her stuff. 

When Steve pulls up outside her house the lights are off. Nobody is home, which is basically the story of her life. She contemplates the blank windows and the overgrown grass in the yard.

“Can I stay at yours?” She almost manages to keep her voice steady.

“Sure.”

“It’s gonna be all right.” Robin doesn’t register what Steve’s said at first because they’re engaged in a minor tussle for the last piece of pizza. Steve wins, but not before Robin has pulled the topping off and stuffed it in her mouth.“You know, if he’s a Russian spy or a government agent or a crazed fan that’s mistaken me for Harrison Ford in _Raiders of the Lost Ark_.” Steve says through a mouthful of sad, topping-less pizza base.

“I think that last option is _definitely_ the most plausible explanation.”

“I know, right?” Steve says. She throws one of his mom’s cushions at him. Surely it’s why they’re called throw pillows in the first place?

“I’m just saying, it’s gonna to be OK.”

“How do you figure that?” She wants to believe him, she really does.

“It’s gonna be OK, because we’re a team. We’re, like, the _best_ team. We’re like the A Team. Actually, no, we’re _better_ than the A Team. We’re like the team that comes before A. Like negative A, or A minus, or whatever. Yeah! Like that.”

“Did you actually just call us the A minus Team, Steve? Because that is a _killer_ name, truly.”

“Yeah, okay, right, but you’re missing my point. Whoever this guy is, whatever he throws at us, we’ll get through it, as a _team_.”

“The _A minus_ team.”

As much as she loves messing with him, Robin gets what he’s saying; they’re great together. The very large problem she has with his general philosophy though, and the reason she can no longer approach life as if it were the next exciting instalment in the Boy Scout’s Bumper Book of Adventures, is that being great together didn’t stop a bunch of premium grade assholes torturing Steve. And they did it just near enough that she got to wonder how long they could hit him for before he died, but just far enough that she couldn’t do anything about it. And when she closes her eyes at night she has dreams with no pictures, just the sound of Steve screaming. But the bit that really, really, wakes her up yelling is the moment of silence after the screams, when she thought they’d beaten Steve to death. So.

But at least tonight when she wakes up in terror and despair, it’ll be in Steve’s bed, with Steve’s warm, strong and completely platonic arms wrapped around her and Steve will be nice enough topretend to believe her when she tells him that she was having a dream about being chased by the Stay Puft marshmallow man from _Ghostbusters,_ or something. So, while what she wants to do is pull her hair, beat her breast and rent her clothing while wailing ‘Why me?’ and ‘Not again!’, she settles for jimmying herself a bit deeper into Steve’s incredibly squishy sofa. Maybe she can just live in the sofa.

“Is there any ice cream left?”

Steve brings her the tub and the spoon.


	2. Nina

Robin is alone in the bed when she wakes the next morning. The room smells aggressively bad. Why do boys smell so terrible? She knows for a fact Steve showers and does laundry and yet, _still_.

She finds him in the kitchen making pancakes. Steve makes pancakes better than anyone she’s met. He even makes them from scratch, not a mix. He hands her a cup of coffee. She wonders if he ever made breakfast for any of his high-school hook-ups and decides not, but that he definitely would have for Nancy Wheeler.

He puts a stack of pancakes in front of her and slides the syrup down the bench.

“Okay, once I’ve eaten these and drunk my coffee, I’ll be ready to talk about it.”

Pause.

“Don’t watch me eating my pancakes Steve.”

She practically licks her plate clean because she knows waiting is driving him crazy, but also because it would be a complete disrespect to his mastery of the form to leave any pancake behind. She nods an okay at him and he pulls his stool up to the breakfast bar.

He leads with: “Okay, so do we think government agent or Russian spy?”

Robin uses her finger to swipe up a stray drop of syrup from the counter before answering: “I’m leaning towards spy, because the government for sure, 100% knows where we live and has our phones tapped. Plus it’s in their interests to keep surveillance covert and this guy is totally showboating.”

“But would that rule out spy too? I mean freaking us out with obvious creepy staring seems like a bit of a light touch for the Russians to me.”

“You mean as opposed to kidnap and torture?” Robin has eaten five pancakes and had three cups of coffee, so she has sarcasm to spare.

“Yeah, exactly. I mean, if it’s not the government or the Russians, it could be someone possessed by a malevolent being from an alternate dimension.”

Robin is quietly impressed by Steve’s use of ‘malevolent’; clearly he’s getting something from all the arthouse films she’s forced him to watch this summer.

“I thought of that,” she says. But I’d kind of expect some other weird shit to go hand in hand with that, and there hasn’t been so much as a power outage in months.”

They both consider for a moment.

“Okay Harrington, humour me for a minute. How much credence do we give to the possibility that our serial observer is just a common-garden weirdo or pervert? And that maybe there’s a perfectly normal explanation for why he’s watching us as we work in the exciting world of video rentals?”

Steve screws up his face in thought. 

“Weeell, I dunno Rob. I mean anything’s possible in theory, but this is _Hawkins_.”

There is a pause while they both consider the implications of this.

“Yeah, I see what you mean. We’re definitely looking at government special op, Russian agent or someone whose brain has been liquified by the personification of evil.”

“For sure.”

“But we have no idea which one of those, or why?”

“Not a clue.”

Robin dumps her plate in the sink.

“Well, I guess we better go rent some videos to some customers then.”

-

It’s midday opening at Family Video on a Saturday. Robin counts cash into the till while Steve turns on the lights and sets a tape of _9 to 5_ playing on the in-store TVs. They make a pretty reasonable attempt at going about their business as usual. Neither looks over to the park.

“Are you ready Rob?”

“As I’ll ever be.” 

They each grab one of the promotional A-frame sign boards that sit on the sidewalk when the store is open. Robin figures that if anyone tries to jump her she’ll hit them in the shins with the ‘2 for 1 Family Movie Deal!’ sign and run. She plonks her sign down and bends down as she kicks its legs open, using it to hide her face as she looks over to the park.

“Shiiit.”

“What? He’s still there?” Steve is automatically on high alert.

“Yes. Get inside. _Don’t_ look over at him, geez dingus!”

They try really hard not to run back in to the store and Robin thinks they just about manage it.

Back behind the counter they contemplate the fact that there is absolutely no cover between them and the massive store windows. There are zero places to hide in Family Video. Except possibly the tiny windowless staff room and there’s only one way in and out of that, so Robin thinks that if they hid in there she might feel like she was being buried alive.

“What now?” Steve asks. “Do we call the team?”

Robin stares at him, genuinely dumbfounded.

“And what team would that be Steve?” 

“You know,” He waves his arms around as if that will help clarify, “the _team.”_

“Ohhhhh, the _team._ Our crack team of middle-schoolers and, oh, don’t forget _Nancy Wheeler. That_ team. How could I fail to be reassured? _”_

She knows she’s being a bitch. Steve’s face is crumpled with confusion. It’s not that she doesn’t like the kids. Well, actually she can’t stand Mike and Lucas, but she likes Max and she thinks she would have liked that Will kid if he’d stuck around. Loud-mouth Erica is hard to like, but pretty easy to be astounded by; like a tiny snack-sized Mussolini skipping around with beads in her braids. And she freaking _adores_ Dustin; she’d never say it, but she’d take a bullet for that kid. She doesn’t even have beef with Nancy Wheeler, for all they’ve said about two sentences to each other.

“I’m sorry.” She rests her forehead on the counter for a minute. “I just really, really don’t want to see any of them dragged in to this. And it really pisses me off that when we exhaust the possibilities offered by our posse of _children_ , there is genuinely nobody else we can call for backup.”

“Yeah.” Steve runs a hand through his stupidly perfect hair. “I really wish Hopper was still around.”

“Me too.”

Pause.

“So what do we do?”

“I’m going to finish opening the store and you’re going to take all these off New Release and stick them into Three Day Rental.”

She hands him a list and a stack of labels and waits for him to get to the back of the store before she commits a massive fucking betrayal.

Palming the keys off the counter, she heads out the front door, locking the door behind her from the outside. Turning around she hears Steve call her name from inside Family Video. As she walks away across the road, he begins to bang on the plate glass door, crying out in earnest now. She can hear the panic in his voice. 

There is the back door, but that will mean a run around half a block of stores to get back round to the front of Family Video and she knows that he’ll be afraid to take his eyes off her for a second. That his worst fear would be running around that block to find her gone without a trace. 

She forces herself to keep walking. This has to be done. She can’t live in fear and the alternative is her waiting and watching while Steve makes this endless fucking trek of 50 yards across the road to the park bench and in to danger. Which is no choice at all.

Because time is a construct and arbitrary and also an asshole, it slows right down for her as she crosses the street. She has that terrible sense of disconnection that comes from knowing the absolute only way out is forward; she can hear the blood pounding in her ears but she can’t feel her feet hitting the pavement.

She walks right up to the park bench where the man is sitting and says, pretty much yelling:

“So, my colleague and I were wondering: are you a Russian spy, or what?”

That’s when she gets her first shock of the day. Okay, she’s been freaking out for a solid 16 hours, but she hasn’t actually been shocked until the moment their mystery man looks up at her from under his baseball cap. 

It’s a girl. For fuck’s sake, it’s a girl. She’s wearing clothes that are about five times too big for her and that look like they should belong to someone named ‘Earl’ or ‘Buck’, with an NRA membership and a dead stag in the back of a pick up truck, but it’s definitely a girl, and she’s about Robin’s age.

“Do you get many Russian spies in Hawkins?” The girl’s voice, when she speaks is kind of English. Her hair is hidden under a black baseball cap, but Robin can see the end of a blond ponytail tucked in her collar.

“More than you would think.” _And ain’t that the truth_.

At Robin’s answer the girl tilts her face up to look at Robin and Robin gets her second shock of the day because the girl is pretty. 

Not shampoo-commercial fake-pretty, but the kind of face it would be hard to get sick of looking at. Her blonde bangs look like she cut them herself, in the dark, but there’s something about the slight tilt of her large brown eyes and the slight quirk at the corners of her mouth that make her look both a little sad and a little amused at the same time. It’s an interesting, expressive face. The girl holds Robin’s gaze, looking back at her as though she’s trying to figure something out. _Really pretty_ Robin’s shit-ass-traitor brain thinks.

Robin feels like a giant all of a sudden, looming over the park bench. The girl is actually tiny, despite her over-sized clothes.

“Do you think I’m a Russian spy?” She hasn’t broken eye-contact and Robin feels glued to the spot by the too-long stare. Robin looks her up and down. Under the big black jacket the girl is wearing a purple t-shirt with a cartoon of a horse on it; it’s strongly reminiscent of something Erica would wear.

“On balance…no.” Robin takes the girl’s back-pack off the bench and sits down beside her. The bag is not heavy enough to be full of a disassembled sniper-rifle, which is a comfort. It also has a Garfield keyring attached to the zipper. “I would say you don’t really look much like a Russian spy to me.”

“What does a Russian spy look like?” Robin can’t quite work out if she’s joking or not.

The girl still hasn’t looked away and Robin wills herself not to blush.

“Actually, exactly like you would expect from the movies.”

“Huh.” When the girl finally stops looking at her it’s as if she’s satisfied with the answer she’s found in Robin’s face.

“I could be in disguise.”

Robin takes another look at the scrambled outfit and the crooked bangs. “No one is _that_ good at being in disguise.”

One corner of the girl’s mouth quirks upwards. _What would a real smile look like on her?_ Robin wonders, before mentally slapping herself in the face _. Jesus Christ, don’t stare at her mouth like a weirdo!_

“What’s your name?”

“Nina.”

“Well, _Nina,_ why are you watching us?” Robin asks.

“I’m not.”

The last of Robin’s fear is draining away, only to be met with an in-rush of anger, like the turning of the tide.

“Don’t try to bullshit me,” she says, sharper than she intended, “You’ve been sitting on this park bench, watching us for four days.”

“I’m not watching you.”

“Crap.” Nina doesn’t recoil at Robin’s anger. She is absolutely impassive as if it doesn’t matter to her if Robin believes her or not, which makes Robin angrier. “I’ve _seen_ you. What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“Waiting.”

“Waiting?”

“Yes, _waiting_. On the _only_ bench in this park.”

Robin looks around wildly, starting to feel uncertain in her righteous anger, because — oh _balls_ — the only place to sit in this sad excuse for a park is right here, directly opposite Family Video and she is beginning to think she may have just made a big, fat, embarrassing mistake. Nina is looking at her again and Robin thinks that just maybe, she is actually amused by the way that Robin has made a complete fool of herself.

“What could you possibly be waiting for four whole days? The second coming?”

“No one should have to wait four whole days to come twice.” Nina’s so dead-pan when she says it that it takes Robin about thirty seconds to realise that this complete and yes, (thank you brain, you shit-ticket) _very pretty_ stranger has just made a dirty joke and when she does she’s so derailed that she just sits there as Nina looks at her with slightly raised eyebrows. Nina’s face is small and heart-shaped and she looks like an odd little pixie; slightly adrift in her too-big menswear. The word ‘fey’ floats into view inside Robin’s otherwise empty brain. It’s a great word. She’s never had occasion to use it before, but this is definitely the moment; fey is exactly what Nina is.

“Your friend just came running around the corner.”

“Shit!” Robin turns to see Steve pounding around the corner of the block. Even from a distance, she can tell he’s in a bad way. She starts to run. 

Robin catches Steve outside Family Video, before he has a chance to run into oncoming traffic. He’s gasping for air and there are tears running down his face. Robin grabs him by the shoulders.

“Hey. Hey. It’s okay, it’s all okay. I’m okay.” He looks at her uncomprehending. She pulls him into a hug and holds him tight. He’s trembling, sobbing brokenly. She rocks him gently. “Shhhh. It’s okay.”

“That was a really bad thing to do.” Steve sounds like a little boy; he’s so upset.

“Yeah, I know.”

“Why did you do that?”

“It was my turn, buddy. It was just my turn.” She can see him trying to pull himself together, dragging his sleeve across his face, but he can’t stop crying.

“Come on. Let’s get you inside.”

She unlocks the door to Family Video and leads him inside. She doesn’t have to turn to know that Nina is still there and this time she _knows_ she’s watching them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steve's Pancake Recipe:  
> 1 cup of plain flour  
> 2 tsp baking powder  
> 2 tbs sugar  
> 2 tbs oil, melted butter or other shortening  
> 3/4 cup milk  
> 1 egg, lightly beaten
> 
> Mix combined wet ingredients with dry, but don't over mix - it should be lumpy. Then cook like pancakes. If you've been raised in a secret lab and have never made a pancake, you need to heat oil in a pan, dollop the mix in and wait until bubbles form and pop in the pancakes before you flip them.
> 
> You can make this mix ahead of time and keep it in the fridge and you'll need to make five times this quantity if you're having a D&D night with a bunch of middle-schoolers in Hawkins, Indiana.
> 
> This is my secret family recipe, so if you tell anyone, I'll have to kill you. Just, kidding - welcome to the family!


	3. Instant Noodles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The kids are beautiful human beings.

Robin gets Steve settled in the back room, clasping a cup of instant noodles with her sweatshirt wrapped around his shoulders before she calls in reinforcements. Technically the phone is for Family Video business only, but Robin doesn’t see how Keith will possibly know one way or the other. She dials Dustin’s number.

“Henderson residence, Dustin speaking,” he answers, sounding like his own butler.

“Hey, it’s Robin.”

“Robin! Hi!” He sounds instantly enthusiastic, which makes her smile involuntarily.

“Here’s the deal: Steve’s had a rough day and I need you to bring all your little friends and come around and cheer him up after we finish work, okay?”

“What happened?” Dustin suddenly sounds serious. Robin draws a breath in.

“If I tell you, you have to promise not to go all _Fellowship of the Rings_ on me, okay?”

“Scouts honour.”

She tells him. He goes from nought to Rivendell in six seconds flat. Robin cuts across him.

“No! Shut up! This isn’t an _adventure,_ Dustin. What happened at StarCourt wasn’t an _adventure._ It _hurt_ Steve. It’s _still_ hurting Steve. And today, today wasn’t the beginning of some mystery to solve, it was a dumb mistake. But it made Steve really scared. And now he needs you to come around and make him feel normal and instead of saying: ‘Yes, Robin, I’ll be there, no problem’, you’re acting like we’ve been chosen to take the one true ring to Mordor.”

There is a pause.

“I’ll get Mike to ask his mom to order pizza and we’ll bring it round.”

“Good plan, champ.”

“See you later Robin.”

“See you later Dustin.”

Robin goes into the staff room to survey the mess she has made of her best friend.

From the Harrington kitchen Robin can see the entire gang watching Star Wars. Actually, she’s not sure if she can describe what they’re doing as ‘watching’ Star Wars. It would be more correct to say they’re reenacting Star Wars, in word-perfect, blow-by-blow detail, using Steve’s family’s possessions as props, in perfect unison with Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher on the screen. Normally, Robin would not be above joining in with this glorious madness — she has definitely put in enough geek hours to be a strong contender, even if her rewind-time has been more than slightly Leia-centric. But tonight she feels off-kilter; the strangeness of the day still held in her body. 

She had given Steve an explanation of what went down in the park, of the mistake they had made and of Nina’s lack of credibility as a would-be abductor. She had told him pretty much exactly what had happened, as he sat looking grey and destroyed at the staff-room table, yet she couldn’t help feeling as if she hadn’t told him the whole truth.She is surprised at how messed up it felt, at how quickly she’s gotten used to being honest with Steve, after _that_ moment in the bathroom stall in StarCourt Mall. She feels shitty and weird and uneasy and she doesn’t know why.

Dustin comes in to the kitchen. She watches him carefully fill his empty glass with three different kinds of soda and considers asking him what he thinks he’s doing _,_ but then decides that she doesn’t really want to hear his answer. He seats himself at the counter, takes a long drink and, apparently satisfied, turns his attention to her.

“So Rob, what’s up?”

“What do you mean?” It comes out defensive without her meaning it to, but it’s not enough to deter Dustin. That kid is an unstoppable force.

“Well, we’ve worked our magic on Steve,” he gestures towards the living room, where Steve is doing Darth Vader with a plastic bucket on his head, breaking character and laughing hysterically. “But I kinda feel like there’s something going on with you that I should know about.” 

“Nope. Nothing.”He holds her gaze, for once in his life: quiet. He’s patient and concerned and she can’t quite look him in the eye. 

She sighs and sinks onto the stool beside him. She thinks about Nina and their strange, awkward encounter. How she felt electric and on edge and how it’s playing on a continuous loop in her brain. She thinks how nice it would be to tell Dustin right now in this moment but, as ever, she remembers the colossal fucking secret she is keeping. She thinks about telling him that and she is truly frightened, truly afraid of letting this dopey middle-schooler in his maths camp t-shirt see her for who she really is. She can’t even imagine what it would be like to say the words. She puts her forehead on her arms. It feels like she’s spent a lot of time staring at counter tops in despair lately. Dustin reaches out and rubs her back. She lets him. They sit like that for a long while before she hauls herself up.

“Come on. If we let them tackle _Phantom Menace_ without us it’s gonna be carnage.”

He gives her his arm like they’re going to Prom and they head back in to the living room.

—

When she wakes up she doesn’t know where she is for a moment before she realises she’s on Steve’s sofa, not in his bed. Someone has covered her with a blanket. All around her, the sounds of the kids sleeping, laid out on the floor in sleeping bags. She squeezes her eyes closed, for once trying to hold on to the thread of her dream before it slips away. 

_She is in Steve’s ensuite bathroom, standing in front of the mirror. She looks at her own face, staring herself down. She wonders, as she always does, what other people see when they look at her. She wonders whether she is pretty. Sometimes when she does this long enough she doesn’t recognise herself. She runs the tap and splashes cold water on her face. She reaches up to open the bathroom cabinet, her reflection disappearing as the mirror swings aside. The Advil is beside Steve’s giant can of hairspray. She shakes two from the jar into the palm of her hand._

_She shuts the cabinet and jumps out of her skin, because it’s no longer her face looking back at her; it’s Nina’s. This time the corners of her mouth aren’t turned up in amusement; there’s no humour in her expression. Robin raises her hand to the glass and Nina mirrors her gesture. Their fingertips meet but don’t touch. Tears catch and spangle Nina’s dark lashes as they roll down her cheeks. Her brown eyes contain so much sadness. Robin touches her own face and finds it wet._

_—_

Robin surveys herself in the mirror and speculates on the kind of mind that settles on hunter green vests out of all the alternatives in the world. On the bright side, the Family Video uniform is not nautical in any way, shape or form, for which she’s grateful.She’s trying not to let the uncanny similarity with last night’s dream get in the way of personal hygiene so she cleans her teeth and thinks about brushing her hair, but settles for some of Steve’s hairspray (carefully averting her eyes as she swings the mirror open) and running her fingers through it. She hopes it looks insouciant and bohemian, but possibly it just looks unbrushed. Oh well, too bad.

Downstairs she finds Julie Andrews making pancakes for the Von Trapp children, oh, no wait — it’s just Steve and his kids. She grabs her back-pack and their lunches from the fridge.

“Yo, Mary Poppins! Let’s roll!” Steve turns off the stove, flips the last pancake on to Max’s plate, catches his car keys in one hand and passes Robin a cup of coffee with the other. She can see why he’s good at sports; it’s poetry in motion. Robin hopes Steve’s parents don’t come back from Europe until after she’s left for college, because then she’ll have to stop living in their house, like an old married couple with their son. Which would be a crying shame.

As they close the door behind them, they can hear Max violently defending her pancake from the boys:

“If you come near me, I will put this fork through your hand, so help me God!”

—

Nina is already in situ when they reach Family Video. She raises a hand and waves at Robin, who waves back. Steve waves too, overacting normal:

“She’s still there! Why is she still there Rob?”

“Apparently, she’s waiting.”

“What the heck for?”

“If I knew, I would have told you.”

They make their way through the routine of opening the store. Another franchise has opened up across town, so they pretty much run this one with minimal intervention, apart from semi-regular passive-aggressive Post-It notes from Keith about company policy.

“Is it like a religious thing? Should we be preparing for the End of Days?”

“Yeah, no, not so much.” Robin thinks back on that particular part of yesterday’s exchange and smirks.

“Did she give you a nutter vibe?”

Robin thinks. “Well, she dresses like she found her clothes on the sidewalk and she’s been sitting on a park bench for five days straight, but if you set that aside, no she didn’t seem like a nutter.

“How do you _know,_ like for sure?"

“I don’t know Steve, maybe because she wasn’t shouting accusations at a complete stranger, because, oh _that’s right,_ that was me.”

“What was she like?”

“I don’t really know how to describe her.”

At that, Steve pauses midway through trying to salvage a VHR cassette with the tape hanging out.

“You don’t know how to describe her?”

“That’s what I said, dingus.”

“Robin, you are like the smartest person I know and you don’t know how to describe this broad?”

“Her name is Nina.”

“Yeah, so I’m not buying, try again.”

“Oh my God, Steve, do you _ever_ let up? You’re worse than Dustin! I don’t know, I met her for less than ten minutes — she’s — don’t know — not like anyone else, I guess?”

There is a silence in the space where Steve’s pestering should be. Robin turns around and finds him with one arm crossed across his chest and the other hand cupping his chin with the index finger raised, like an old-timey detective in a movie. She does not like his expression. It’s smug.

“So, _Robin_ , was she cute?” He waggles his stupid eyebrows.

“I’m going for lunch.” She slams the back door on her way out.

She sits on the back steps in the service alley behind the stores and contemplates her sandwiches. 

“Fuck it.”

She gets up and heads around the corner to the park to see Nina.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Being in the closet is the worst: poor Robin. Don't worry gang, I'm working on it. And if you haven't figured out who Nina is yet, then you're not trying.  
> I'm writing from Australia, so I keep having to Google things like "what do Americans call instant noodles?" Instant noodles, as it turns out. It's a fun adventure.


	4. Meatball Sandwich

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to anyone who's ever tried to woo a girl with booksmarts. You know who you are.

This time she crosses the park with a modicum of dignity. There’s no sneaking up to Nina; she’s got the joint cased, as it were, from her position on the park bench. She looks up as Robin approaches. There’s a flash of blonde hair as she removes her baseball cap to take off a pair of headphones.

“Hey Robin.” Robin goes through four seasons of panic at the fact Nina knows her name, before she realises she’s wearing a name-tag. Nina definitely registers Robin’s internal turmoil — her mouth lifts at the corner in the way Robin is beginning to suspect means she’s amused.

“Hey stalker.” Nina raises her eyebrows and purses her lips, but says nothing. 

Robin flops down on the bench beside her, picks up Nina’s Walkman and takes out the tape, without asking. She know’s she’s being a brat, but something about Nina makes her want to poke her as hard as she can until she squeaks. She looks at the tape, expecting music, but instead it’s one cassette from _David Copperfield,_ by Charles Dickens, ‘complete and unabridged’, with a Hawkins Public Library sticker on it.

“So this is what all the cool kids are listening to these days.”

“I wouldn’t know.” Nina’s response is cooler than Robin would like and she just knows she is going to start babbling, just to get Nina’s attention. It’s inevitable, like gravity.

“I like _Great Expectations_ the best.”

“Yeah?”

“I always figured I’d end up like Miss Havisham.”

“Because you hate men?”Robin frantically replays the conversation and tries to figure out how she has managed to out herself in less than thirty seconds of talking to a pretty girl.

“What? No! Just, you know, living alone with lots of cats and heaps of attitude.”

“She’s not alone, she’s got Estella.”

“I’m not really sure Estella counts as company.”

“You might be right.” Nina gives Robin, not quite a smile, but a kind of friendly look. _‘A kind of friendly look?’ Geez Rob, you’re clutching at straws here,_ Robin thinks.

“I can think of worse things,” Nina says.

“Huh?”

“Living alone with lots of cats and heaps of attitude. I mean, it sounds like a solid plan to me.”

Robin grins. “Yeah, me too.”

Nina pulls a brown paper bag out of her back pack, which is Robin’s cue to unwrap her own lunch.

“Whatcha got?”

“Peanut butter and jelly.” Nina looks glum.

“Classic.”

“It’s literally the only food I know how to prepare.”

Robin laughs.

“Want to go halves?” She offers Nina her sandwich and Nina looks at her as though she’s offering up her first born child.

“Really?” Hope is written all over Nina’s face.

“Sure, go ahead.” They swap sandwich halves.

“Oh my God!”

“What?”

“This is the most delicious sandwich I’ve _ever_ eaten.” Nina says with her mouth full of Robin’s sandwich. It’s the least composed Robin’s seen her so far and she resolves to see more of it, if it means she has to eat half a PB and J sandwich every day for a year.

“Well, I made too many meatballs and Steve had some nice bread, so it was a marriage of convenience really. The sandwich, not me and Steve.” _There it is, the babbling._

“Wait. You _made_ this? Like with cooking?”

“Yeah,” Robin laughs at Nina’s expression of wonder, “Exactly like with cooking.”

“It’s like magic between two pieces of bread.”

Robin looks down at her lunch, and tries not to glow with Nina’s enthusiasm. “I pay a little old lady to help me practice Italian conversation and she throws in cooking lessons for free. I think she’s worried that I won’t find a man to take me if I can’t cook.”

“Is that the goal?”

“Is what the goal?”

“To find a man to take you?”

Robin snorts and narrowly misses spraying Nina with half chewed sandwich. _Real suave._

“Fuck no,” she says before she realises she couldn’t sound more like a raging dyke if she tried. Which makes it twice in one very short conversation that her big mouth has tried to out her. 

_Thanks so much big mouth, if you could wait for brain that would be so nice, please thanks so much, love Robin._

“Umm, no, it’s not actually very important to me, in fact.” Robin’s brain sings a little song inside her skull. The words go: _‘Lesbian, lesbiaaaaan, she’s gonna know you’re a les-bi-aaaaan!’_ She pays it no mind, she’s heard it before. “But it seems to be important to Mrs Moretti and I can’t really argue with her rad skills so, I’m learning to cook.”

“And you’re learning to speak Italian?”

“Um, actually, I already speak Italian, but I need to be super-fluent for college next year and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Hawkins isn’t exactly cosmopolitan, so I spend my Thursday nights with an seventy-five year old lady making meatballs and helping her water her houseplants.”

“That sounds like a pretty great use of a Thursday night to me.” Robin looks to see if Nina is teasing her, but no, apparently she’s serious.

“Yeah, she also has a really cute poodle, called Pepe and sometimes I get to hang out with him, too.” Robin is pretty sure that the addition of this last sentence really hammers the nails home on the coffin, fills them with wood filler and sands them back before touching up the paintwork. Nina doesn’t seem to be judging her lack of cool though:

“I love dogs,” Nina says. She sure does. Her whole face has brightened.

The words that Robin wants to say are: ‘Why don’t you come along with me one time?’, but inviting Nina to spend time with old Mrs Moretti, her dog and her houseplants seems like the weirdest thing she could do, so she fights it down.

“So you’re going to college then?” Nina asks.

“Yeah, I got a full ride, but I need to work here for a year first if I don’t want to starve when I get there.”

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

“What makes you think I’m not already grown up, Nina?” Robin knows it’s almost to close to call, but she thinks Nina’s expression could be called a smile, maybe. Robin draws an arc in the dirt with the toe of her sneakers. She feels kind of shy telling Nina this; it’s something she’s kept mostly to herself. Hawkins isn’t the best place for big dreams. “I want to be an interpreter. For the UN. But I don’t know if it will happen, so yeah.” 

“I think it probably will.” Nina says it so matter of factly, that Robin’s not really sure how to react, so she decides to poke the bear. _Gold star Robin!_

“So are you going to tell me why you were watching us?”

Nina rolls her eyes.

“This is the last time I’m going to say this: up until yesterday, when you stormed your way into my life, I was _not_ watching you. Although I have to say that your friend throwing himself into the window display was hilarious and the high point of my week.”

It takes Robin a beat to parse what Nina has just said.

“Wait, what do you mean ‘up until yesterday’?”

Nina sighs.

“I mean, up until yesterday, you were just another random part of the rich and varied scenery that I get to experience waiting on a bench on the outskirts of a shopping precinct in small-town America. But then you made me notice you and now it’s quite hard _not_ to notice you.”

_What the fuck is Robin meant to do with that?_

“So who are you waiting for?”

“Are you always this nosey?”

“I’m not nosey, I’m suspicious, and if you walked a mile in these moccasins, you’d be suspicious too.” Nina gives Robin one of her extra long looks, before nodding.

“Fair enough. Don’t you have a job to go to?”

Robin does have a job to go to and it’s long past the end of her break. She doesn’t want to leave the conversation here though. She somehow feels like she’s blown it. _Fuck it; she’ll bring Nina a sandwich again tomorrow._

—

Steve has really put everything into his interpretation of this scene from _A Victorian Father’s Guide to the Management of Wayward Daughters._

“What time do you call this?”

“Ah, 12:45?”

“12:45? 12:45!”

“Yes, dingus, that’s what I said.”

“Don’t take that tone with me Robin; you’ve been out on that park bench for all of your break and half of mine talking to _that girl!”_

“Her name is Nina.”

“I don’t care what her name is, we don’t know anything about her! She could be a minion from the realm of darkness for all you know. We don’t definitively know she isn’t going to knock you on the head and drag you off to an undisclosed location!”

“She’s tiny, I could totally take her!”

“What if she knows jujitsu?!”

“Okaaaay, easy now Stevie. I’m just going to wait here behind the yellow line until the crazy train goes past.”

Steve calms down.

“Sorry I was back from break late,” Robin offers.

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll just take mine now.”

Pause.

“What did the two of you talk about for all that time anyway?”

_Classic literature and my hopes and dreams for the future,_ thinks Robin. _Oh fuck._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So in an ideal world, I would post chapters using some kind of regular schedule, but it turns out, where fanfic is concerned, I'm an 'eat the marshmallow' sort of girl, which was a surprise to me, so I'm chucking them up willy-nilly.
> 
> In addition, I should probably also be using my writing to drive the plot, but really I'm enjoying hanging out with these folks so much, I'm just going to amuse myself on that count.


	5. Two Kinds of Lasagna and Four Trays of Muffins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know if a Chapter Summary is something you feel necessary to your experience and I'll try to put something meaningful in this box.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the next-but-one exciting instalment in this adventure I need a little help translating Australian in to American. I’d be much obliged. End notes for details please.

_Robin is bound hand and foot, alone in the dark. She’s been here before. She can taste blood in her mouth, but she doesn’t know where it’s coming from and she can’t wipe it away. She starts to cry, because no one can hear her and she knows what’s coming, without being able to do a thing to stop it. In the moment before the screaming is due to start, a beam of light cuts through the darkness, a figure standing backlit in the doorway. The door is shut very gently and the darkness returns with less intensity than before. Robin hears bare feet padding softly over to where she lies prone on the floor. Robin’s world is narrowed to what she can see directly in front of her. Nina has to lie down next to Robin before Robin recognises her. She lies curled up on the rough concrete, her face an inch from Robin’s. Robin doesn’t think she’s ever been so near to someone before; ever studied someone’s face from this close up. She looks into Nina’s eyes and Nina looks into hers. Ever so gradually Robin realises that the increased light is coming from Nina; that Nina is glowing ever so slightly. Everything about her is pale, much paler than Robin remembers; her skin is eerie in its paleness. Her hair, without her trademark baseball cap, frames her face, tousled and untidy, cropped closer than in life. She’s wearing a white cotton hospital gown and Robin thinks she must be cold, laying on the floor. In the dimness her brown eyes look black, but the expression in them is soft. At her throat Robin notices the only colour in the scene; purple-blue fingerprints blooming beneath the surface of her skin. Nina reaches out one hand and pushes Robin’s hair back from her face. Robin holds her breath. Nina brushes her thumb along Robin’s lower lip; slowly, deliberately._

_—_

Four in the morning is actually a fabulous time to make lasagna. Robin can’t believe she’s never thought of it before. Now they have extra bolognese for the freezer too and she might use some of this roast eggplant to make pizza later in the week.

By the time Steve wanders down at eight, ready for his run, the kitchen is clean and the lasagnas are cooling on the stovetop.

“Uh, Rob?”

“Do you want a muffin?” she says, pulling a tray out of the oven. “The banana ones are done, but the blueberry ones need another five minutes. I think there’s a cold spot in your Mom’s oven.”

Steve takes a muffin on automatic.

“This is delicious.”

“Thanks. I never know if I’ve got the cinnamon right, but I put some nutmeg in these, just for kicks.”

“Rob?”

“Mmm?”

“What is all this?” His gesture takes in the lasagnas, the Tupperwares full of cooling bolognese, the trays of muffins and Robin wearing the novelty Swedish Chef apron that Dustin bought Steve over her pyjamas.

“I thought we could have the lasagnas for work lunches. And there’s a couple for the freezer, but we're gonna have to shuffle some things around so they fit, because it’s a bit of a squash in there.”

“Robin, how long have you been awake?” The timer on the muffins goes off, so Robin doesn’t have to answer him.

—

Robin carries two Tupperwares of lasagna across the street. She’s heated them in the staff-room microwave, so the first thing she says to Nina is:

“Oh my God, my hands are frying, would you take one of these before they drop off?” which explains why Nina’s general demeanour is bordering on startled. Nina holds the Tupperware as if she’s never seen one before. “It’s lasagna. There’s a piece of eggplant lasagna on one side and a piece of regular carnivore lasagna on the other.” Robin pulls a pair of forks out of her back pocket and hands one to Nina. Nina holds the fork in one hand and the Tupperware in the other as if she is unsure of their relationship to one another. “I mean, you don’t have to eat it if you don’t want,” adds Robin.

“Wait, what?” says Nina.

“I said: you don’t have to eat it if you don’t want, it’s no big deal.”

“This is for me?”

“Umm yes? That’s the general idea. I made lasagna this morning,” Robin tries not to think about _why_ she found herself making lasagna at four am, “And I thought it might add some food-groups to the whole PB&J scenario.” Robin is starting to babble, _what a surprise,_ because Nina is still sitting there as if the Tupperware could detonate at any minute.

“You cooked food and then you brought it for me to eat?”

“That was the exact sequence, yes. Don’t make this weird.” _Is this weird? Was bringing her lunch a weird thing to do?_ “Has no one ever brought you lunch before?” Robin covers her rapidly blooming embarrassment with defensiveness and then immediately feels like a garbage human being because the way Nina’s face goes completely, utterly blank tells her that, as a matter of fact, no one _has_ ever brought Nina lunch before. Nina places the Tupperware carefully on the bench beside her, fork on top. Robin tries to fix it with words.

“So, how’s _David Copperfield_ going?”

“I finished it last night. I’m on to _Wuthering Heights.”_

_“_ Heathcliff, it's me, Cathy, I've come home” Robin sings, because a) she’s nervous and b) she just _can’t_ help herself.

Just as Robin is preparing to sink into the earth and completely unprompted, Nina begins the dance sequence from the music video. It’s as perfect an impression of Kate Bush as has ever been done while sitting on a park bench in Hawkins, Indiana. When she finishes, she turns to Robin and, just like that, the lights are back on.

“That’s all I remember and also I’m not going to do the pirouettes in the park, because I tend to fall over.”

“That was the best thing I’ve ever seen in downtown Hawkins.”

“Is it a high bar?”

“Admittedly, no.”

Nina starts hoeing in to her lasagna, shovelling it into her mouth with single-minded focus.

“This is really good lasagna.”

“Nina, are you dealing drugs?” Nina shows no sign she’s heard, so Robin continues. “It’s a reasonable question. See, I’m still wondering what you’re doing sitting on this park bench every day. There’s not a large cross-section of options.”

Then: “Oh my God; are you being held hostage? Like maybe you’re wired with explosives and if you get up off the bench someone’s going to press the red button? You can tell me if you are: blink once for ‘yes’, twice for ‘no!”

Nina throws her head back, casting her eyes heavenward and letting out a long sigh. She puts the now empty Tupperware down, placing the fork carefully on top. Then she slowly unbuttons her jacket, holding it open for Robin to inspect. There’s some plaid action, but a complete lack of Wile E. Coyote dynamite sticks. Robin reflects that perhaps she has been spending too much time with Dustin lately, because it seems to be rubbing off. Today Nina’s t-shirt reads ‘I survived Camp Three Pines’ and has a picture of a grizzly bear on it.

“Did you?”

“Did I what, Robin?”

“Did you survive Camp Three Pines?”

“I just bought the shirt because I liked the bear.”

—

Steve’s kids call in after school. It’s no surprise. The kids turn up every day for as many free videos as they can carry. Today she is glad to see them because there are four trays of muffins that need eating. For a good ten minutes the only sound coming from the lot of them is chewing. It’s incredibly peaceful by comparison.

Dustin sidles over to where she is sitting on the counter, contravening company policy.

“Is that her?” he says, spraying crumbs on the floor Robin has to vacuum and nodding in the direction of the park.

“It sure is.”

“Can I go talk to her?”

“I’d pay you not to.”

“Any idea what she’s doing?”

“None whatsoever.”

Dustin stares at Robin with way more perspicacity than she likes to see in a fourteen year old. She pulls the brim of his baseball cap down over his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so when one shares a bicycle (or a horse) with another person, we refer to that as ‘a double-dink’ or ‘double-dinking’.
> 
> The rack on the back of the bicycle that holds one’s possessions is called a ‘pack-rack’.
> 
> A bicycle helmet of the chunky variety worn in the 80’s is a ‘stack hat’, because to stack is to fall and/or crash. (My cousin’s nickname growing up was Stackers, because she fell over so much; say it with an Australian accent, go on, I dare you.)
> 
> Please can you tell me what you call these things in America? Thank-you kindly.
> 
> I’d also like some feedback on the best methods of double-dinking. I was an only child living at the top of an extremely steep hill, so it wasn’t part of my childhood bike-riding repertoire.


	6. Diana Ross

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Days are tough, weeks are tough, so I've written a giant ball of sunshine for y'all. I hope you enjoy it.  
> Your kudos and comments are more appreciated than you know; it's nice to know I'm not sending this into the void.  
> The Indiana Challenge Dancesport Competition is a real thing; sometimes life is better than fiction.

Tuesdays at Family Videos are slow. So very slow.

Naturally, Robin and Steve have put some time into creating an extensive suite of wholesome boredom-busting activities for boys and girls. One of them is Mix-Tape Tuesday. Technically Family Video has a number — a _very small number —_ of company approved selections, carefully curated to create an appropriate in-store experience. On about the third day of working at Family Video, Robin very carefully unspooled the tape inside each company approved cassette and fed it over a fridge magnet, before winding it back up. Now Robin and Steve have Mix-Tape Tuesdays.

“DJ Steve is in da haaaaaaaus!” It’s Steve’s turn to supply the tunes today. He puts the cassette in the player with a flourish and hits play. “What’s that you hear?” He puts one hand theatrically behind his ear. Diana Ross sings:

_Ahhhhaim comin’_

_Out_

Steve points to Robin, arm extended. “Robin Buckley, they’re playing your song!”

No one could ever accuse Robin of having a limited emotional range. She goes from terror and panic, to irritation — once she has confirmed that, yes, they _are_ alone in the store — to something resembling amusement as Steve starts to shimmy.

And, incontestably, Steve Harrington brings the moves. Not many people would recognise the little boy who was Junior Runner Up in the Indiana Challenge Dancesport Competition three years in a row, but here he is: all grown up. As far as the dance floor is concerned, Steve will forever be Prom King. Robin whoops with laughter as he swings her round the store in a wild approximation of a waltz, her feet barely touching the ground. She feels like Deborah Kerr in _The King and I._

“I'm coming out! I want the world to know!” they sing, at the top of their lungs, which is, of course, the moment that Nina walks into the store.

Robin freezes, primed for humiliation, or worse: exposure. But Nina is not looking at them with shock, disgust or scorn. Nina is looking at them with unbridled delight. She is grinning; a full-teeth, mouth-open grin. And, in the name of all that is holy, the girl has dimples. _Dang!_ Robin thinks.

Steve rescues the moment, which is super — _thanks Steve —_ because Robin is really not sure what to do next. He honest-to-goodness _sambas_ up to Nina with one hand outstretched, the other towing Robin in his wake.

“Niiiiiiiinaaaaa!” He says it like she’s his long-lost something and then he’s twirling them both around and around under his arms, like jewellery box ballerinas, never missing a beat, his hips swaying and feet flying. Then they’re _all_ singing and dancing:

Nina brings no moves whatsoever. The girl has rhythm, granted, but she uses it to jump around like a kid at her cousin’s wedding. It’s infectiously gleeful and hilarious. Nina’s singing along, not holding back; her voice is strong, decent but not breathtaking, but she’s singing the harmonies, notes dancing around Steve and Robin as they keep pitch with Diana Ross, like she’s been waiting her whole life for this one instant of crazy abandon at three o’clock in the afternoon in a video store in downtown Hawkins. It’s pure joy, and Robin is filled with it.

As Robin lays on her back looking up at the ugly ceiling tiles and trying to stop laughing she reflects that, surprisingly, Family Video holds some of her best memories and this is one of them. It’s an unexpected realisation, on so many fronts. Nina and Steve are in the same boat vis-à-vis laughing hysterically, and every time it looks like they may all have it together, someone breaks it and they’re all laughing again. It hurts, but in the best way.

Steve hauls Nina up off the floor. “I’m Steve. I think you’ve met my colleague, Robin Buckley.”

“What about New Releases?” is Nina’s response to this, as she reads Steve’s ‘Ask Me About New Releases!’ badge, which is roughly at her eye level.

“You know, I have no idea. I’m really just making it up as I go along, you know?”

“Okay?” Nina obviously doesn’t know. “So if I wanted to know how this video thing works, I would …?”

“Oh, Robin totally knows all about it.”

“Yes Robin _does,_ ” says Robin, getting up off the floor and taking charge.

They both watch Nina fill in a new membership form and Robin kicks Steve just a little bit before he can snatch it like an overeager moron. She takes it as Nina slides it across the counter to her, trying for casual, although Nina’s expression says that she saw Steve’s wince and knows exactly what’s happening.

“Nina Smith, hey?” she says, reading from the form.

“Someone has to be called Smith,” points out Nina, reasonably.

“Do you have some form of ID?” asks Steve proving that he has absorbed some of the Family Video training. Nina hands hers over. The address on it is a real address in town. Robin recognises the street name if not the actual building. She doesn’t know what she was expecting: ‘Nina the Mysterious Stranger, The Park Bench Opposite the Video Store, Hawkins, Indiana, USA, North America, Planet Earth, The Milky Way, The Universe’?

Steve squints suspiciously at Nina’s ID. “There’s no way you’re 21.”

“Bite me,” says Nina, elegant in her simplicity.

Robin hands over Nina’s membership, still warm from the laminator.

“New releases, three-day hires, weekly hires, Comedy, Romance, Horror, Thriller, Western, Foreign and over in the corner is what passes for racy in this one-horse town,” says Robin, pointing. “Take the copy behind the front case.”

“Okay,” says Nina, and off she trots.

Robin and Steve watch her progress around the store with interest. Fifteen minutes later she returns with a stack of videos; she’s just about able to hold the whole pile together with her chin, but it’s tight.

“You obviously have big plans for Tuesday night,” says Robin, coming around the counter to help her.

“I’ve never really had much opportunity to see movies, so I’m catching up.” It’s the first time Robin can remember Nina volunteering information about herself.

“It’s kind of an eclectic mix,” says Robin, passing Steve _Annie_ , _Roman Holiday_ and _The Terminator_ to check out for Nina.

“I have this motto,” Nina replies. “It’s ‘try everything’. Otherwise how do I know what I like?”

“I guess that works.”

“Damn straight, it does.” Nina smiles at Robin, so of course Robin smiles back.

Steve has paused midway through Nina’s hires.

“Can I help you Steve? Is there a problem?” He grabs a video and hurriedly swipes it through the scanner in a completely not-subtle way. It’s not that he’s smirking, exactly, but he does look a little bit too pleased.

“Whoah!” Steve has reached Nina’s copy of _Children of the Corn_ “You’d better not watch this one alone. It’s frrrrrreaky.” Steve rolls the ‘r’ for emphasis.

“Oh.” It’s almost imperceptible, like someone turning the light dial down extremely slowly. _She literally has no one to watch that dumb movie with,_ Robin realises with a kind of horror.Steve has evidently got there too, because the next words that come out of his big fat mouth are:

“Robin will come over and watch it with you, won’t you Rob?”

Robin turns to Nina ready to say something flippant, only to find Nina looking at her as if she’s been promised a free kitten.

“Sure,” she finds herself agreeing.

“I’ll see you after work then,” says Nina, paying Steve in cash and all but skipping out of the store.

They watch her go. Robin realises her mouth is open and then shuts it.

“Steve?”

“Uh huh?”

“What do you think you’re doing?” He grins. “What if she does turn out to be an agent of darkness?”

“Aww, come on Rob, she’s _tiny!_ You could _totally_ take her.”

“What if she knows jujitsu?”

“I don’t know about jujitsu, but I’ll tell you one thing for free Rob.”

“And what would that be, dingus?”

“The girl has _great_ pitch.”

“Shut up.”

“I mean did you hear those harmonies? _Man!_ ”

“Shut up.”

“100% in tune.”

Robin looks around for something to throw at him.


	7. An Unguarded Moment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're wending our way towards finding out about Nina, but we're not there yet. 
> 
> I've also broken my rule of keeping one chapter ahead of what I'm posting, so we're in frontier land now folks.
> 
> Obviously I solved my bike-related translation issues, but I still think it would have been more fun if they stacked it while double-dinking.
> 
> Hope you enjoy.

Nina arrives just as Robin is turning the key in the Family Video lock. Of _course_ she does.

Steve gives them a cheery wave, tossing his car keys up and catching them again.

“Have fun ladies!” Robin glares daggers at him, but Nina just smiles and waves. Robin hefts her bike up from where it has fallen onto the pavement.

“Come on then.” She wants to look back over her shoulder and make a face at Steve, but she refrains, just.

“Robin?”

“Yeah?”

“I wasn’t kidding when I said the only food I know how to fix is PB&J sandwiches.”

“It’s okay, we can have grilled cheese. Everyone can make that, right?”

“Right.” There is a pause. “Can we stop at Bradley’s Big Buy?”

“Sure.”

They walk in silence, but for once in her life Robin doesn’t feel compelled to fill it. She looks over at Nina, who catches her and smiles.

“I’ll only be a minute.” Nina leaves Robin outside Bradley’s. Robin shifts from one foot to another. _What the heck am I doing here?_ She has no clue how she’s found herself on this weird date — _no, not date, it’s not a date_ _—_ with this weird girl, although she’s pretty certain Steve has something to answer for. She could not have predicted this happening. Nina returns, carrying a grocery bag.

“All done.”

“You ride the bike and I’ll walk.” Robin offers her bike to Nina. Nina looks dubious, but takes Robin’s helmet and puts it on. Robin takes the groceries and hangs them off the handlebar. Nina steps up to the bike, almost on tip toe.

“You’re short, but you can totally do it.”

“I’m going to let that slide, because I’m concentrating on trying to get on your giant bicycle.”

“Alice is not giant. She’s perfect.”

“Why is the bike’s name Alice?”

 _Because my last bike was called Gertrude,_ Robin does _not_ say. “Why not?”

Nina hoists herself on to the seat and, in slow motion, the bike falls sideways.

“Steady!” Robin catches her before she bites the dust. “Okay?”

“Fine.”

“I’m gonna let go now.”

“Okay.” Robin removes her hands from the handlebars and steps back. The exact same thing happens again, although this time Nina falls in the opposite direction and Robin has to leap to catch her. “Jesus! Have you never ridden a bike before!”

“How hard can it be?”

“Wait — _what?”_ Nina shows every sign of trying for a third time. “You’ve never ridden a bike before? Are you serious?”

“Deadly serious.” There’s something self-possessed about Nina, even when she’s nearly succeeded in falling off a bike twice in less than 30 seconds. If it were anyone else Robin might make fun, but there’s no point. Nina is not afraid of being laughed at; the girl gives zero fucks. Robin, _wishes_ she could give less fucks. She gives lots of fucks. Mostly about people whispering in the halls of Hawkins High, turning away in the street. Things written in marker on her locker door. Drunk guys yelling names from the windows of their cars as she walks home alone. Maybe about this girl not wanting to be her friend. Right at this second, however, what she gives the most fucks about is Nina not smashing her front teeth out on the pavement by falling off of Robin’s bike.

“Okay, let’s try this another way. Give me Alice before you break her. We’re going to ride doubles, so take that dumb cap off.” Nina does. She isn’t wearing a hair tie, just using the hole at the back of the cap to keep her hair in a pony tail. She shakes her head like a dog to fluff it out and Robin tries not to stare. Nina stuffs the cap into her backpack. “You sit on the seat and keep your feet on the frame, unless you want to kill us both. Got it?”

“Yes m’am!” Robin rolls her eyes at Nina. She swings herself over the centre bar.

“You need to hold on to me.” _Holy shit, she needs to hold on to me._ Nina grabs Robin’s shoulders, which frankly, is a relief, because Robin was afraid she might go for the waist, which would be way too close for comfort. Robin pushes off, standing up on the pedals.

“Shit! I’ve got it. You’re _Amish!_ ” Robin yells over her shoulder.

“I’m what now?”

“Amish! Like that religious where they have horses and carts and stuff.”

Nina laughs. “Oh my God, a religion where I get a horse and cart? Where do I sign? Get me a pen!”

“I don’t think you get the horse and cart straight away.”

“What, is it like a points plan?”

“Yeah, I think you start off with like, a small pony, or a large dog and work your way up from there.”Nina roars with laughter, the wind taking the sound. She leans in and rests her head against Robin’s back, one arm around Robin’s neck, as if they do this all the time. Robin pedals faster to match the rhythm of her heart.

“Hold on.” Elm Drive is one of the steepest hills in town. They come over the crest and then they coast, picking up speed. Nina sits up and yells:

“Oh yeah!” She throws her head back “Whoohoo!” The houses are flashing past in a blur. Robin takes her hand off the brake and then they’re _really_ flying, they’re both yelling: wild, defiant battle cries. For the first time since StarCourt Robin feels fearless, untouchable, alive to the night and the vastness of the darkening sky.

And then:

“It’s the next building.” Robin puts her feet on the ground and holds the bike steady so Nina can hop off. “That was…” Nina shakes her head as if she can’t find the word. “I can’t believe I’ve never done that before.” Nina’s hair is windswept, she pushes it back with one hand. Her face is alight. In her whole life, Robin has never wanted to kiss someone as much as she wants to lean forward and kiss Nina, as night falls around them, as lights go on in the houses; little pockets of light in the darkness. It takes her breath away.

For a heartbeat Robin isn’t sure of what will happen next. Nina is still, her brown eyes meeting Robin’s gaze. “Come on. You can leave your bike in the stairwell.” Nina turns and Robin follows.

—

For a long time now, Robin has avoided being in girls’ bedrooms. She actually avoids any situation that is going to be full of the effortless, easy intimacy that straight girls seem to manage with no trouble at all. The way they casually invade each other’s personal space sends Robin into a tailspin. It’s probably one of the reasons why she doesn’t have any close female friends. She once got partnered with Tammy Thompson on a history assignment and had to go around to her house. Crossing the threshold into Tammy Thompson’s bedroom was simultaneously the best and — if she hadn’t been held captive by Russians and fought for her life against a diabolical offal monster — would have also been the most terrifying moment of her life.

It’s fortunate then, that Nina’s bedroom is also her kitchen and her everything else, too. It’s also the ugliest studio apartment Robin has ever set eyes on. It’s tiny and cramped and just about everything in it is chipped, dingy and old. Robin presumes it came furnished with whatever the previous tenants left behind because she can’t imagine anyone actually assembling this disparate assortment of furniture with any sense of lucid purpose.

“Make yourself at home.”

Robin dumps her bag on the floor and looks around. Nina unpacks the things she bought at Bradley’s Big Buy: one bowl, one plate, cup, knife, fork and spoon. Clearly she was not expecting company before Robin showed up. By the care with which Nina removes it from the bag, a mug with Donald Duck printed on it is the pièce de résistance in her mind. There’s already a Mickey mug on the draining board with the breakfast dishes, so clearly Donald is intended for Robin. Robin feels unreasonably pleased about the fact that she now has a mug at Nina’s house.

“Sorry, I have to do these.” Nina starts running water into the sink. “It’ll only take me a minute. You can put some music on or, you know, just keep stickybeaking. Suit yourself.”

Some words sound wonderful in Nina’s accent; the short vowels more clipped, but the endings softer than the sounds Robin has grown up hearing. ‘Stickybeaking’ is one of them; Robin plays it back in her head, the way she would a new piece of vocab in French or Italian. The way Nina says it lets Robin know she doesn’t really mind.

“Thanks, I will,” not making it clear which option she’s referring to, but definitely intending to do both.

There are three points of difference that indicate that Nina actually lives in this shitty apartment. Otherwise it could belong to just about anyone, as long as they weren’t fussy, or couldn’t afford to be fussy.

One is a bedspread with a geometric pattern that make it look like someone has dropped radioactive pizza all over the bed.

Two is a brand-new VCR sitting on top of a _monstrous_ old TV. Robin can tell it’s brand new, because it’s literally shiny, but also because it’s box is still leaning up against the side of the TV.

The third point of difference is pushed up against the only available wall space. Nina has two book cases that are absolutely stuffed with books, records, CDs and cassettes. Between them, on a crappy laminate coffee table is a crazy-nice hifi.

“Whooah!” Robin basically runs over to it, which makes Nina smile.

Nina also has a lot of books. Even in an ordinary situation, Robin has a significant amount of curiosity about other people’s books, but _Nina’s collection?_ She couldn’t not look if she tried. As it turns out, it’s complete madness; there is no unifying style or aesthetic to Nina’s taste.

“Try everything,” Nina reminds her.

“Right.”

Back in the bedroom in the house she doesn’t really think of as home anymore, Robin’s bookcase is always ordered, even when every item of clothing she owns is on the floor. Nina’s bookcase is making her head explode. Nina is watching her reaction with a half-smile, just one dimple in play.

“There _is_ a system,” she says, as if she can hear Robin’s thoughts.

“There is?”

“They’re arranged in order of how much I like them. The middle at eye height, then outwards.”

Robin immediately looks.

“Anna Karenina is your favourite book?” Robin is disappointed. She hates that book.

“ _My_ eye height.” Robin tries again, two shelves lower. _The Secret Garden_ and _Jane Eyre_ are side by side in the prime position. Robin files this away for later.

Above the hifi is a framed print of a post-impressionist horse, Blu-Tacked around it are sketches in charcoal and pencil, each central sketch surrounded by studies of small details; a cat’s paw, claws unsheathed, beads of sap dripping from the wound left by a broken branch.

“You’re like two different people.”

Nina raises one eyebrow.

“See, all this, “ — Robin gestures around at the apartment in general — “says: ‘interior design is the enemy of the Proletariat. But this,” — Robin points to the wall full of books, music and drawings — “says: ‘Art is My Life.’ Two completely different people.”

“Oh my God, Robin _you’ve figured me out!_ ” Nina explains, with an unnecessary amount of sarcasm.

Under the coffee table that holds the hifi is a stack of hardback TimeLife books, each titled _A Beginner’s Guide to Something or Other._ They are in various states of use: _A Beginner’s Guide to Housekeeping, A Beginner’s Guide to Financial Planning_ and _A Beginner’s Guide to Birdwatching_ are all well-thumbed. Others are in mint-condition, evidently barely read.

“Didn’t have much time for _A Beginner’s Guide to Flower Arranging,_ I see.”

Nina makes a noise that sounds like ‘pftshaw’. “You just put them in a vase with water; anything else is overthinking it.”

“You got the whole set; did you get the free steak knives?”

Nina opens the cutlery drawer with one soapy hand and pulls out a steak knife. “It’s just a pity I don’t know how to cook steak.”

“What about _A Beginner’s Guide to Cookery?”_

Ninagives the steak knife a venomous jab in the direction of the TV. Initially Robin is confused, but then she sees that Nina does indeed have a copy of _A Beginner’s Guide to Cookery,_ but it’s currently being used to level up the short leg of the television.

“Are those _scorch marks_ on the cover?”

“There was a lot of assumed knowledge,” Nina says with dignity.

Robin turns back to the wall full of art. The drawings not only look like the things they’re supposed to — a feat Robin never managed in all her time art class — they’re full of movement and emotion, unsettling and alive with the artist’s intention. A flock of crows fight over carrion, wings outstretched. A child stretches towards a dropped toy; its mother, unnoticing, pulls away it by the wrist with an expression of blank desolation.

Robin is arrested by a new thought. “Nina did you _draw_ these?”

“Yes.”

“Holy fuck, they’re incredible!” Nina ducks her head towards the dishes she is washing, but not before Robin sees a pink flush creep into her cheeks. _Keep it together, Robin Buckley, you hopeless lesbian._

“There’s one on the counter you should look at.” Nina’s counter is clearly used for art and not food. Robin hops onto one of two mismatched bar stools. The picture Nina is talking about is immediately obvious in the pile of art supplies and sketches. It’s Steve and Robin, as seen through the window of Family Video, on the day of Steve’s olympic popcorn victory. Nina has captured the motion of Steve’s trajectory as he hurtles towards the window display; it’s a second before the popcorn lands in his mouth and his eyes are filled with anticipation and hope. In the background is Robin, her eye-line beyond Steve to where the first video is beginning to teeter, dawning realisation writ large in her features. It is a _fucking masterpiece._

Robin looks at Nina with her mouth open and then back to the drawing and then back up at Nina again. She’s having trouble processing the implications of what she is seeing and Nina seems to find it very amusing, because she’s laughing.

“It’s just a picture.”

“Holy heck Nina, when did you even do this?”

“Sometimes when I get home I sketch some of the stuff I’ve seen that day.”

“You did this from _memory?”_

“That’s what I’m telling you.”

“Nina you are a goddamn genius.”

“I’ve had a lot of practice.”

“No I’m serious, this is amazing, you could go to art school.”

And there it is again, the slow dimming of Nina’s light. Her face doesn’t change as she clears away the sketches, but when she looks back at Robin her eyes are utterly blank. This time Robin doesn’t know what she said to break it, but she knows that she has.

“Are you going to put some music on?” Nina asks.

Robin goes oven and places the needle on the record that’s in the turntable. The band is good, but unfamiliar. They sing:

_In an unguarded moment,_

_In an unguarded moment._

_Chance would be a fine thing,_ Robin thinks.


	8. Grilled Cheese

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here you go, have another chapter full of angst and unresolved sexual tension. We'll close the book on this particular theme in the near future, but for now y'all will just have to lean into it.
> 
> The song in this chapter and the last is 'The Unguarded Moment', by The Church. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Osz-GQbX37o

It’s quite a peppy song, even if Robin doesn’t recognise it. It’s melody sits in counterpoint to its lyrics, which are quite dark, just as its general vibe is sitting in counterpoint to the weird thing that’s happening in the kitchenette.

_Tell those girls with rifles for minds_

_That their jokes don't make me laugh_

_They only make me feel like dying_

Nina was right there with Robin and now, in a blink, she’s absent. If Robin hadn’t seen it happen she might not have noticed. If the closeness she feels to Nina — her laugh, the way the corners of her mouth turn down, the light in her brown eyes — didn’t make her whole body hum, she might not have noticed. But there it is, and all she can do is wait, because what else can you do when someone has left the room but is still standing right there in front of you?

Nina takes a loaf of bread and some cheese out of the bag of groceries she got on the way home. She places them on the counter and stares at them as if waiting for divine intervention. She looks up at Robin and Robin actually sees the moment the shutters open and she comes back.

“What do I do with these Robin?”

“You haven’t made grilled cheese before, have you?”

“I don’t know why you didn’t believe me when I told you PB&J was my food-preparation limit.”

“How have you not died of scurvy?”

“Well, Robin,” Nina says in a schoolmarmy tone of voice, “firstly because scurvy is Vitamin C deficiency and even I can pour juice into a glass.” She suits the action to the words and hands Robin a glass with a flourish like a stage magician’s assistant. “Secondly, because this is America and you’d be amazed at how many foods there are that you can eat without having to prepare anything at all.”

“Okay, I see that.”

“Now, are you going to help me or are we going to starve?”

In the end Robin makes the grilled cheese. Nina watches it bubble and brown, crouched down in front of the grill. “Who’d have thought it?” she says. Robin snorts. When it comes time to take it out, Nina attempts to pull it out with her fingers. “Son of a bitch!” She puts them in her mouth. Robin rummages in the drawer and comes up with an egg flip. She hands it to Nina.

“Use a utensil. Geez were you born in a barn?”

“Something like that.” Nina eyes the egg flip before using it to slide the grilled cheese on to a plate. “I always wondered what this was for.”

“Well, now you know.”

Nina puts _Children of the Corn_ in the VCR and plonks herself on the manic pizza bedspread with her plate of grilled cheese. Robin sizes up her options. She can sit on the bed — _Nina’s bed — with Nina_ , or she can try the mission brown cracked vinyl recliner, which is her only other alternative. She goes for the recliner.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” says Nina through a mouth full of grilled cheese. Robin does anyway, and the minute she does, she regrets it.

“Holy crap, this chair is ridiculously uncomfortable!”

“I tried to tell you.”

“It’s like a punishment for all my past sins contained in one piece of furniture.”

“I’m pretty sure you haven’t done anything bad enough to deserve that armchair.”

“How have you not thrown it out the window?”

“I can’t lift it. It weighs a tonne. If you want to try, you have my full support.”

Robin relents and sits herself down on the bed, keeping a careful inch of space between her and Nina.

The buffer zone doesn’t last long. The thing is, Robin doesn’t actually like horror movies and she hates _Children of the Corn_ just as much this time as she did the first time around. After the opening massacre sequence they both jump like twelve year olds when Vicky blows the party hooter at Burt and it’s pretty much downhill from there, although Robin spares a thought to reflect that if Linda Hamilton was dancing around a motel room wanting to have birthday sex with _her,_ she wouldn’t be as much of an asshole about it as Burt. Really, some people are just asking to be murdered by a sect of creepy children.

Somehow in this scenario, Robin has been cast in the stoic boyfriend role; Nina is watching the film with her face hidden in Robin’s shoulder. Robin has an internal debate about whether to put her arm around Nina, but it seems weirder not to, so she does and resigns herself to trying to watch the movie without opening her eyes.

Fifteen minutes later and they’re both under the covers, the pizza bedspread held just below eye level.

“Oh _no,_ don’t go into the fucking _corn!”_ Nina yells at the television.

“You need to tell me when this part is over. I can’t take any more.” Robin ducks under the bedspread and pulls one of Nina’s pillows over her head. Nina yanks it off and whacks her with it.

“Get up! I’m not doing this alone!”

The film finally ends. They emerge from the fortified bedding hut they’ve inadvertently built; Robin feels dazed, Nina looks dazed.

“Why did we do that to ourselves?” Nina asks. Robin just shakes her head — she knows why she did it, but it’s probably not the greatest reason and it’s certainly not one she’s gonna share with the class.

“We can’t finish the night on that,” she says instead.

Nina throws her backpack on the bed, full of today’s haul from Family Video. “Pick another one.” She opens one of the kitchen cabinets.

“Whoaah. That is literally a cupboard full of candy,” says Robin, snooping.

“If it offends you, I have fruit also.”

They watch _The Wizard of Oz,_ because it’s the tamest movie in Nina’s selection. The irony of watching this particular film with Nina is not lost on Robin, but she works her way through a packet of Skittles and keeps it to herself. At the end of the film, after Judy Garland has delivered some hokey dialogue with an earnestness that actually makes it touching, if not plausible, Nina turns to Robin with bona fide tears shining in her eyes.

“That was _wonderful.”_

“No. I don’t believe it.”

“What, you didn’t like it?”

“No, _of course_ I like it.” _How could I not?_ thinks Robin. _I’m a friend of Dorothy._ “It’s just Nina, _how have you not seen_ The Wizard of Oz?”

Nina lets out an actual groan and this time her exasperation tips over into genuine annoyance.

“It may surprise you to know, Robin, that there’s a limit to the things I have experienced in my life, up until this moment in time. I haven’t watched the Aurora Borealis dance across an Arctic Sky, I haven’t learnt to play a musical instrument, I haven’t kept a pet, I haven’t been to a performance of _Twelfth Night_ , I haven’t swum in the Atlantic ocean and I haven’t seen Kilimanjaro rising like Olympus above the god damn Serengeti.” She runs out of breath and has to stop to suck a lungful of air in. “So what do you say to that, Robin Buckley?”

Robin truthfully has no idea what to say to that, but her big mouth intervenes and what comes out is:

“Most people in Hawkins wouldn’t know what the Aurora Borealis is.”

“I’m not most people in Hawkins. I’m not most people anywhere.”

 _No shit,_ Robin thinks, but what comes out is:

“I could teach you to play an instrument.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I mean not the bagpipes or the oud, or anything, but I can probably teach you the guitar or piano.”

“That’s a shame, because I was really holding out for the bagpipes.” Robin hits her with the pillow. 

—

“Oh shit, it got late.” Robin looks out the window; it’s properly dark outside. Once upon a time this would not have bothered her. Once upon a time she used to ride her bike around town until the sun came up, baseball cards flicking in the spokes, just for the heck of it. Now she is genuinely afraid of the dark and all it contains and all it represents. In the given circumstances, she thinks it’s not unreasonable, but she hates being afraid all the same.

“I’ll walk you home.”

“That’s crazy. If you walk me home, who’ll walk you home?”

“I can handle myself.”

Robin has a sudden thought. “Do you know jujitsu?”

“I don’t even know what that is.” Robin mentally scores a point against Steve.

“I’ll just ride fast. I’ll be fine.”

“You can just stay over.”

Robin takes a deep breath and assesses her options. She can call Steve to come get her; but it’s late and that’s going to mean acknowledging a few things she’s more comfortable pretending he doesn’t know about, such as the fact that she’s not really okay. She can ride home in the dark, except she’s not sure that she actually _can_ anymore. Or she can stay with Nina, in Nina’s nice — for a given value of nice — secure apartment, but presumably _in Nina’s bed_ , _with Nina. Oh well Robin, shit had to get real some time,_ she tells herself.

“Yeah, okay, thanks.”

Nina leans over Robin and wrestles with one of the drawers in the nightstand. It gives up the fight and Nina drags a t-shirt out and tosses it to Nina. It’s many Xs worth of extra large and has a duck wearing sunglasses on it. “Does all your clothing have cartoon animals on it?”

“No it does not,” says Nina and then wrecks it by adding: “but not for lack of trying.” Nina grins and Robin rolls her eyes. “Don’t get lost on your way to the bathroom. Towels under sink. Maybe a toothbrush, but no promises.”

Robin makes her way through the door that can only lead to the bathroom, what with the lack of options afforded by the apartment in general. It’s every bit as crappy as she expects, but it is very clean. _A Beginner’s Guide to Housekeeping,_ she thinks. She braces herself agains the sink and looks herself in the eyes in the mirror. Getting in other girls’ space is hard for her. It always feels like she’s the opposing magnet, sliding away without ever touching, the repelling force of her fear pushing her away. With Nina, it feels like she might actually get through the experience of spending the night and, although it doesn’t feel easy, at least it doesn’t feel actively dangerous. There is a spare toothbrush, so she cleans her teeth.

She gets into the bed with the minimum level of trepidation possible. Nina immediately cosies down opposite her so they’re lying face to face on their pillows. _Okay, so this is how we’re rolling,_ Robin thinks, forcing the overwhelming sense of déjà vu back into its box. _Stupid weird dreams._

“How come you know so much stuff Robin?” Robin doesn’t feel like she knows much stuff at all.

“Are we revisiting the egg flip/grilled cheese relationship again?”

“No, I think I’ve grasped that thank you so much.” Sarcasm from Nina. “Like Italian and the piano and the guitar.”

“School, I guess? I started playing in marching band in middle school and then, you know—” She waves her hand to indicate the passing of time.

“Not really. Tell me.”

So she does. She tells Nina about how they tried to make her play the tuba, even though she was tiny in middle school. She tells her the dumb story about the first time they marched on a slope and how fourteen-year-old Robin, dwarfed by her instrument, slowly inclined from the vertical and ended up sliding down the hill on top of the tuba, ploughing through the rest of the band as she went. At the time, even through the burning embarrassment and shame, Robin remembers a part of herself thinking: _You’ll be dining out on this story for years._ And here she is telling Nina and Nina is listening and laughing.

“So then they let me play clarinet instead.”

Robin tells Nina about her favourite music teacher, who always found a way to get Robin to music camp and who still lets her come in after hours to practice on the school piano, even though she’s graduated.

“You have a nice voice,” is what Nina says when Robin runs out of things to say.

“Does that mean you haven’t been listening to what I’ve been saying?”

“I’ve been listening,” she says quietly, and Robin believes her. “I’m definitely going to draw a picture of you sliding down the hill on the tuba. I might even make a flip-book.”

 _For that,_ Robin returns, “ _You_ sound like the Queen of England.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not what I sound like.”

“Nina?”

“Mmm?”

“Will you tell me what you’re doing waiting on that park bench?”

Nina sits up on one elbow.

“Robin have you told me all _your_ secrets?” she says, sharply. She looks straight at Robin, holding her ground. Robin’s heart begins to pound. _She knows._ She doesn’t answer Nina, which is answer enough. “I would _never, ever_ ask you to give me more than you are willing to give.” _Holy fuck, she knows_. “If you want to be in my life, then that’s the baseline; that’s the rule. Can you do that?”

Robin hesitates and then she nods. Nina stays propped up, staring down at Robin. When the words come, they come from a long way away.

“I just want to know you.” Robin whispers.

Nina looks ancient. She looks a hundred years old and just so damn tired. She lies down again, facing Robin.

“Me too,” she says softly, Robin can’t bring herself to ask what she means. Nina bumps the back of her hand gently against Robin’s furled fist where it lays on her pillow between them.

They lie there, inches apart, studying each other. Robin bets that this is not what normal people do at a sleepover, but this seems to be what they’re doing, so okay. They stay like that, breathing in time, holding each other’s gaze. Just before she slides into sleep, Robin sees Nina’s eyes flutter closed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While we're on the topic of The Wizard of Oz, I made a huge portrait of Judy Garland for art in Year 12 and thought I was being immensely subtle. No one knew I was a lesbian, right?


	9. Enlightening and Then Again, Not Enlightening at All

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this instead of doing my work. 
> 
> This chapter is a bit of a chunky monkey - I wanted to get to the point where next chapter can be exposition, but I felt like Robin needed to do a bit of personal growth first.

Robin’s initial concern had been that she would either have a nightmare and screaming would be involved, or that she would wake to find herself entangled with Nina in some sort of awkward and compromising position. She doesn’t feel equipped to discover whether she’s the little spoon or the big spoon in this equation. So it’s a pleasant surprise to find they’ve both stayed in the same arrangement as they fell asleep in; face to face on their own pillows. It’s not without its challenges though, because the first thing Robin sees when she wakes up is Nina’s sleeping face. Nina wakes a moment after Robin, Robin sees her swimming up to consciousness. Nina smiles a slow, sunshine smile. Robin has never been a situation where someone looks so glad to be waking up next to her. Nina’s hair is all mussed up and Robin’s defences are _low._ She smiles back.

“Your hair is crazy.” Nina reaches out her hand and tries to brush Robin’s bangs back in place. Robin’s heart stutters.

“I’m kind of always fighting a loosing battle where my hair’s concerned.” Nina curls a lock of Robin’s hair around her finger and tugs, just a little bit. Robin feels the blood rushing to her face. 

“I don’t have to work today. We could do something.”

“Oh. I, um, have to—” The regret in Nina’s face lets Robin know what the end of the sentence is going to be and she finishes it so Nina doesn’t have to.

“You have to wait on the bench in the park.”

“Yeah,” says Nina in a low voice.

“Hey, it’s okay.”

“Not noticeably. Do you want breakfast?” Even without their new agreement, Robin really doesn’t have the right to call anyone else on an obvious deflection. _Glass houses and all that jazz._

“I think I’ll take a shower first.”

“Don’t get lost on your way to the West Wing.”

“You made that joke yesterday.”

“If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.”

Robin showers and tries to get her head on straight. It doesn’t work; it’s a lot to ask of a shower, after all.

“So what’s the breakfast situation?”

“I can make you cereal.”

“You know, I think you’ve been holding out on me — and here you were telling me you couldn’t cook.”

“Yes, but see, there’s this awesome thing where the instructions are on the box.” Nina holds up the cereal carton and points: “Milk, cereal, bowl.” Sure enough, the picture on the carton shows twin streams of cereal and milk pouring into a bowl. “No assumed knowledge. I even have more than one kind.”

She sets out two more boxes. They all have in common illustrations showing the cereal/milk/bowl combo. Every time Robin thinks she’s getting a handle on what the heck is going on with Nina, the goal posts move, but she lets her make her cereal, because there’s no point in being confused _and_ hungry.

“What are my chances of coffee?”

“You know what I love about you Robin?” Her heart beats faster, even though she can spot the punchline a mile off.

“It’s my wonderful sense of humour, isn’t it?

“It’s your best feature.”

-

Robin rides to the end of the road and up to the top of Elm before she realises she doesn’t know where she is going. As a last resort, she goes home. It’s every bit as depressing as she expects. All the clothes she doesn’t like are on her floor, chair and bed, because, of course, all the clothes she likes are hanging in Steve’s closet or neatly folded in her drawer in Steve’s dresser. She grabs a couple of books and a few sweaters in concession to the fact she’ll need them soon and stuffs them in her bag. Then she clears a space on her bed, sits down and stares into the middle distance. She _wants_ to go and sit on the park bench with Nina, or really just to be where she is generally, but that would be _beyond_ weird. She wants to go find Steve and tell him all about it, but then again she doesn’t, because Steve is home and Steve is real and she’s not ready for whatever he’s gonna have to say on the matter. _What is she meant to do with this?_ She groans and then heads out, because even through all the noise she can recognise that wallowing in her bedroom is a poor choice of tragic lesbian trope.

—

She’s sitting at a table in Benny’s Burgers with a shake, making a heroic attempt to concentrate on translating Perrault from French to English when someone sits down opposite her.

“Where’s your booooyfriend?”

“Steve’s not my boyfriend!” slips out before she can stop herself, which is, of course, the worst possible way to respond to Erica Sinclair, who looks ecstatic to have gotten a rise out of her.

“Whatever you say, nerd.”

“Shouldn’t you be in school, little girl?” she says reflexively and then realises from Erica’s shifty expression that yes, school is exactly where she should be. “Erica, are you _skipping?”_

“I needed some Erica-time, what’s your excuse?” she says with poise. She snaffles Robin’s shake and helps herself to a long sip.

“I’m an adult, I don’t need an excuse. Aren’t you worried that I’ll tell your mom?”

“Aren’t _you_ worried that I’ll tell my mom about the whole child-endangerment thing you and your boyfriend put me through?”

“One, he’s not my boyfriend and two, she wouldn’t believe you.”

“Oh, she’d believe me.” And that’s how they reach an impasse, Erica making slurping sounds as she finishes Robin’s shake. “So where’s your boyfriend?”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“You two nerds are practically joined at the hip and you expect me to believe that?”

“Erica, I don’t care what you believe.” Robin rests her head on one hand and stares out the window to the parking lot. When she looks back, Erica is glaring at her with an unreadable expression on her shrewd little face.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“What makes you think something is wrong?”

“Where do I even begin with that?”

“Don’t feel you have to.” Erica is going to have her say, no matter how much Robin protests. She is reminded of Lucy in _Peanuts_ : ‘Psychiatric help 5¢; The doctor is IN.’ Which probably makes Robin Charlie Brown.

“For starters, you’re sitting in this sad diner, all by yourself like a loser, making a complete mess ofthis — what is this, _homework?”_ She pulls Robin’s translation across the table. “Haven’t you _finished_ school?”

“What do you mean ‘a complete mess’?”

“I’m not even in middle school and even I can see this is wrong.” Before Robin can stop her, she grabs Robin’s pen. “Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong!” _She’s fucking correcting Robin’s work._

“Give me that!” Robin snatches her notebook back. _Oh for fuck’s sake._ Erica is right. Robin was speaking French at college level in high-school, but today’s effort is peppered with dumb mistakes, now with Erica’s wobbly corrections hammering home the point.

“See, I _told_ you. Your fake homework is garbage.”

“Is this you trying to make me feel better?”

“Who said anything about trying to make you feel better? Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

“How much would it take to get you to leave?”

“More than you have.”

Robin wails into her arms, face down on the table. Then, because Erica is an immovable object: “I like someone and I want to tell Steve, but I’m afraid he’s gonna tease me. Are you happy now?” she says without lifting her head.

“Am I hearing you correctly?”

“I don’t know Erica, are you?”

“That is the lamest thing I ever heard and I have spent _a lot_ of time with my brother and his stupid lame-ass friends. I don’t know what you’re getting out of lying to yourself, but whatever has you moping in here on your own, it’s not because you care what Steve-high-hair-Harrington thinks. So you better look inside your soul or whatever and get a grip. I mean, what are you really afraid of?”

Robin is speechless for a long while, which is due to the generalised Erica-effect, but also to the fact she’s right. Again. Whatever she’s telling herself to justify the current state of play, it’s got nothing to do with Steve — it’s not really even about Nina. It’s about doing something — anything — to interrupt the holding pattern she’s made out of her life.

She’ll have to pull herself together and deal with her shit. Somehow.

But first there’s something that needs her attention:

“So how about we talk about why you’re not at school?”

“How about we talk about free ice-cream for life? Interest owing on non-payment.”

“I’m pretty sure that deal burned down with the mall.”

“I’m pretty sure my mom would burn you down if she knew what you did.” Robin ignores the threat.

“You know, if I wanted to squeal on you I wouldn’t have to go to your mom. I could just tell Lucas next time he comes into the store to get videos.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I would. Or you could just tell me why you’re not at school and we can part friends.”

“We’re not friends.”

“Okay, I guess I’ll be having that chat with your brother then.”

“Tina didn’t invite me to her birthday party and then Stephanie told Kylie to tell Sarah that Jessica didn’t want to sit with me anymore.” Erica says this in a mumble, while looking intently at the straw from Robin’s shake, which she is jabbing viciously in the empty glass, as if it’s done something to insult her personally. Robin plays the speech back a few times over in her head, to make sure she’s understood.

“Who _did_ Tina invite to her birthday party?”

“Stephanie, Kylie, Jessica and Sarah.” _Ouch._ Basically, Erica’s little friends have dumped her. It’s not that Robin blames them; she’s certain Erica is a tyrant in the playground. It’s only that, while Erica may be a pain in the ass, she’s _Robin’s_ pain in the ass and Robin feels responsible. Maybe this is how Steve feels all the time. It’s a sobering thought.

Robin waves the waitress over and pushes a menu at Erica.

“Sundae.”

“Extra fudge?” Robin sighs.

“If you must.”

Robin waits until Erica’s sundae has arrived, before she tries her hand at pastoral care.

“Okay, I’m going to say something and I want you to listen.” Even with a mouth full of the sundae that Robin has paid for, Erica sighs like this is the most exhausting thing anyone has ever asked her to do. Robin perseveres. “If your friends don’t treat you right, they aren’t your friends. Fuck them.” Erica looks both delighted and scandalised by the swearword. “I mean it — fuck them. You, Erica Sinclair, are going places and if they aren’t on the train, they’d better get off the goddamn tracks.”

“I’m pretty sure you mixed your metaphors there.”

“Okay, we’re done, here.”

“Have fun with your boyfriend!”

“Not my boyfriend.”

As she pedals away towards Family Video, Robin thinks that Erica heard what she had to say.

—

Robin goes in through the back door of the store. It’s not that she doesn’t want to see Nina, it’s just that she wants to talk to Steve first. Steve is bouncing a rubber ball against the wall. He looks relieved to see her, either because he’s close to expiring from boredom or because he was wondering if Nina had taken her out with her rad jujitsu moves.

“Robin!” He bats the ball her way and she catches it one-handed. “How was your play date?”

“Oh ha ha, very funny.” Robin hoists herself up to sit on the counter. “It was — interesting, is what it was.”

“Interesting how?”

“Enlightening and then again, not enlightening at all.”

“Are you trying to drive me crazy here?”

“What exactly do you want to know Steve?” Ostensibly, Robin has come here for the express purpose of talking to Steve, but it’s so much easier if she baits him into asking the hard questions. She gives herself a mental black mark for being a shitty person.

“Oh I don’t know Robin, how about: _did you make a move on her_?”

“Oh yeah Steve, I swept her off her feet.”

“Really?” Steve sounds thrilled.

“No, not really.”

“Well, why the heck not?”

“If you’re so keen, why don’t _you_ make a move on her?” Even as she says it, she knows it’s too far, because if he did make a move on Nina, she’d have to pretend she didn’t care and she _would_ care and it would be awful.

“I don’t know Rob, maybe because she’s not really my type.”

“Why, what’s wrong with her?” Robin is instantly defensive.

“Ohhhh. Oh Rob, I’m sorry. You’ve really got it bad, haven’t you?” Steve is sympathetic and amused at the same time, his face caught in the same kind of expression people use when a puppy falls over. “She’s not really my type, because my type doesn’t include girls my best friend is into, okay? Other than that, she seems great.”

“Oh god Steve, I’ve got it so bad.”

“Hey, that’s a good thing, I’m happy for you.” Steve comes and tucks his chin into Robin’s shoulder, giving her a hug from behind. “When are you going to ask her out?”

“Why would I do that?” Steve loosens his embrace and turns his head so he can look at her like she’s lost her mind.

“Am I missing something here?”

“I don’t even know if she likes girls.”

“I didn’t know if you liked girls when I asked you out,” Steve points out. Now it’s Robin’s turn to look at him like he’s lost his mind.

“That was completely different.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re normal and I’m… you know.” Steve puts some distance between them; his stance sharpening and his eyes narrowing.

“No Robin, I don’t know: what are you?”

“I’m a…” She makes a vague gesture, the word ‘freak’ hanging unspoken in the air between them.

“A super-smart, funny, beautiful, strong woman?”

“That’s not what I was going to say.”

“Well, fuck you. Robin you’re a fucking catch and if people can’t see that, well, fuck them. Even if she’s not a lesbian she should be flattered you’re interested.”

Robin sits with that in silence.

“She’s got a lot of secrets, Steve.”

“Holy fuck, Robin, _so do you.”_

“It hasn’t escaped my notice.”

“Why do you have to make it so complicated? Just ask her to the movies!”

Robin looks over at him and runs her hand through her hair.

“You think?”

“ _Yes!_ ” His tone is both fond and deeply exasperated. “But first, if I were you, I would go rescue her before she drowns.”

“Shit!” While they’ve been engaging in their impromptu life-coaching session, it has started to rain. Nina is hunched on the park bench, like a larger version of the birds clinging desperately to the tree branches, shrunken into her oversized clothes, leaning into the gale. It’s the kind of rain that only escalates; the kind that ruins picnics and birthday parties and sends everybody running for cover. Everyone except Nina it seems.

“What is she doing?”

“I’d better go get her.” Robin grabs last-month’s poster for _The Muppets Take Manhattan_ and holds it over her for cover. The stormwater drains are already backed up and there is an inch of water across the road, the neon lights from the stores reflecting a rainbow off its glassy blackness. The rain is falling so hard that the raindrops are bouncing back off the ground, so Robin is getting wet from both directions. “Nina! What are you doing? Come on! Get inside.” She grabs Nina by the wrist and drags her across the street. As they fall through the door into Family Video, _The Muppets_ poster disintegrates around them in a mess of pulpy paper. Steve is waiting with a roll of hand towel and the mop, which is clearly all he could find in answer to the water cascading off them and on to the floor. He rips a handful off and offers it to Nina.

"I have to go back.” She shows every sign of heading back out the door into the deluge.

Steve looks alarmed. “Hey, steady, you can't go out in that — it's raining brontosauruses out there.”

"I have to go."

Robin tries: “Hang out with us here; it’s only a couple of hours until closing and then Steve can drive you home.”

“You don’t understand, I have to go, I might miss them.” Nina is visibly distressed. Her hair is plastered to her face and her eyes are wide and wild. Robin is between Nina and the door and she catches Nina by the shoulders as she makes a break for it.

“We can help you! No questions asked, I promise!” Nina pauses and Robin sees an expression of wonder flit momentarily across her features. “We can help you keep a look-out, we can see the whole square from here — look!” Robin spins Nina round so she’s looking out the store windows into the day that is as dark as night under the lowering storm clouds. When Nina turns back to her the hope in her eyes has been replaced by something like despair. She makes a fist with one hand and jams her knuckles against her forehead, once, twice, three times, before Robin can stop her. She’s not quite punching herself in the face, but the violence in the action is disturbing. “Hey, hey don’t do that.” Robin speaks softly, as to a frightened child or a wounded animal. “Whatever it is, we can help.” She’s got Nina’s fist clasped in both of her hands.

“You don’t understand. You can’t help me. I can’t — I can’t describe them in a way that will make sense to you.”

“If you can describe who you’re waiting for, how will you know them?” Steve asks.

“I’ll know.” She actually turns to leave, as sheet lightening lights up the world outside; for a second it’s as bright as day and then the thunder cracks, bringing darkness back with it, so loud and so close they feel it as a physical force.

“Wait! Geez, wait up!” It’s Steve that saves the day. “No one is coming out in this, look — the stores are closing early.” He’s right; the lights of the arcade blink off. “I don’t care how motivated your mystery people are, the only way they’ll be coming today is in a boat.” It’s this more than anything that seems to change Nina’s mind. Her shoulders sag a little as the fight leaves her. “Come on, hang out with us — it’ll be fun,” he adds.

Nina nods.

“Okay?” Robin asks, bobbing her head to look under Nina’s sodden bangs and into her eyes.

“Okay.” Robin lets go of her hand. Nina takes a deep breath and takes the bundle of paper towel Steve is offering her.

-

Fifteen minutes later they’re playing crazy golf.

It’s a game they only play when they’re sure no customers, and more importantly Keith, will be coming into the store. They’ve improvised a club out of an empty soda can, some rolled up movie posters and a shit-load of duct tape. When they first hit upon this concept, they’d considered bringing in one of Steve’s dad’s golf clubs, but their version is much more fun. They use a ping-pong ball so if you don’t hit it exactly the right way it goes flying. They award extra shots to the card if someone breaks the soda-can club and the duct tape needs to come out.

They use VHS cases to make the course; each of them takes charge of building half of the holes — now with Nina, it’s thirds — and they try to build the most elaborate traps and follies they can manage.

Nina is quite creative with her contribution to the course — _figures,_ Robin thinks — but egregiously bad at hitting the ball. She’s way ahead of Robin and Steve in terms of shots when she hits the ping-pong ball much too hard. It ricochets off the walls and ceiling before rebounding into the hole. It’s a complete fluke and Nina hoots in triumph. Steve yells in congratulations and thumps her on the back, nearly sending her flying. They do an absurd war-dance, Nina waving the golf club over her head like a spear. They dance around Robin while she pretends to consult an imaginary rule book, looking over a pair of imaginary spectacles. When she awards Nina the shot and wipes enough ‘bonus points’ off her score so that she’s beating Steve, Nina punches the air.

“Yessss!” She jumps up and down and pulls them both into a hug. “Winning at golf!”

Caught in the middle of Steve and Nina, who are both _loud_ in their celebration _,_ Robin’s heart feels like it won’t keep up. Nina’s emotional weather goes from shade to sun and Robin is always one step behind. Less than an hour ago, Nina stumbled into Family Video like some orphan of the storm; adrift and terrified. Now she’s _fucking_ radiant. Outside the storm has abated and the last rays of sun have broken through the clouds to set the rain-slick streets and buildings on fire. Each leaf on each dripping tree is like a little golden mirror. None of it’s brighter than Nina, who’s laughing so hard her nose is crinkled and her eyes are scrunched shut.

Robin wonders how and why a person learns to change from one thing to another so quickly. She can’t bring herself to move away from it, but she’s not sure she’ll survive it.

-

It happens later, when they’re cleaning up the mess they’ve made of the store. Nina and Robin are trading banter when Nina steps back on to a case they’ve missed. As Nina’s foot slides out from under her, Robin instinctively grabs for her, pulling her upright. They end up too close, with Robin’s hands on Nina’s waist and Nina’s arms on Robin’s shoulders, like they’re gonna set off in a slow dance. When Robin thinks back on it all later, it’s this that she thinks is the reason, if not the excuse, for what happens next.

There is more electricity in the inch of space between them than there was in the whole damn storm. Robin can feel her entire body buzz. Nina’s gorgeous, wry, mouth is open, her breath is high and fast in her chest, matching Robin’s. She reaches up and brushes Robin’s hair back behind her ear and her fingertips stay, lingering, on Robin’s cheek. Her brown eyes are locked on Robin’s and, if Robin was braver, she would move forward into the moment. But she isn’t and so she looks away. Which is how she sees the number ’09’ branded into the pale skin of Nina’s forearm. And because she’s thinking about what she’s just let slide through her grasp and not what she’s saying, the next thing that comes out for her mouth is:

“Can you move things with your mind?”

And then all hell breaks loose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love getting your comments, they make me happy.


	10. More Instant Noodles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: We're going to visit the lab.
> 
> Here's another one for y'all. I had some darkness, so it's a bit brutal. Hold on to your hats.

When Robin was a kid, she fell into a neighbour’s pool and drowned. She was playing in the yard and her ball went over the fence and into the pool. She went to retrieve it, overreached and fell in. She remembers feeling surprised to be drowning, because she was old enough to be able to swim, but the weight of her clothes and shoes was like a giant claw, dragging her down. She remembers the exact moment she realised she was never going to make it back to the surface and stopped fighting.

It was a long time ago — she’s not thought of it from one day to the next — the neighbour found her and pulled her out and resuscitated her while his wife tried to track down her parents, but here, in this moment, she is brought back to that memory; looking up at the sky while the weight of the water crushed the life out of her. Now, as then, she knows she is going to die.

She always thought that dying of fright was a complete fiction. It turns out she was extremely wrong; the fear that she feels now is, unequivocally, going to kill her. Nobody’s heart should beat this fast; the individual beats have become a whirring, rushing sound, that roars in her head like howling wind. Her vision narrows, going black at the edges. She can’t move. Breathing is out of the question. She floats out of her body — after all, she doesn’t need it anymore.

From this new vantage point above herself, she doesn’t feel anything. The terror that is killing her belongs to the body down there. Over by the counter Steve has fallen to the floor, curled in foetal position. She should feel horror, but she can’t feel much of anything at all. She thinks — and the thoughts come slowly now — how strange it is that everything was fine, such a short time ago, minutes, seconds really, and now here she is; dying of fear. She doesn’t even know what she’s afraid of.

From up here, she can see Nina, still locked in an almost embrace with the thing that was Robin. There’s a part of Robin, a part a long way away and getting further away still, that wishes she’d kissed Nina, while she had the chance. If she’d know she was going to die, she would have. It’s too late now.

Nina is the only point of motion in the whole scene. The non-Robin is still, chest barely rising and falling. Nina is shaking so hard she almost blurs. Something, far off in the distance is shouting at Robin. It’s pulling her back towards the pain and fear and she really doesn’t want to go. Nina’s eyes are almost black, her pupils eclipsing the irises. Tears are pouring down her face. The thought crawls into view: _it’s Nina that’s frightened. This is her fear._

And then the line pulls taught and snaps Robin back in her dying body and everything is agony. She does the only thing she can and even that feels like it’s is close to the last thing she’ll ever get to do. Robin pulls Nina in towards her and holds her.

“I’m here.” It’s the last air in her lungs and it comes out as a whisper. She doesn’t tell Nina things will be okay, because she doesn’t want the last thing she says to be a lie. She’s told enough of them already. But if they’re going to die here and now, then she needs Nina to know she isn’t alone.

And then it begins to go; like water down a drain. It’s the strangest fucking feeling, having the fear pour out of you and away, as if it’s not touching the sides. _But then, it was never yours to begin with,_ thinks Robin. She can breath again. She does — huge gasps until her lungs stop hurting. Then it’s gone, like it never happened.Robin doesn’t have time to think about it; Nina buckles at the knees and she has to catch her before she hits the floor. She lowers them both to the floor and sits, holding Nina against her, Nina’s head tucked under Robin’s chin. She can feel the force of Nina’s crying against her collar bone; which is good, because it tells her Nina is still alive. “Steve!” she shouts across the store, not bothering to hide the urgency in her voice. “Steve, are you okay?”

“Rob? Oh crap.” There is the sound of metal scraping and then a horrible wretching and splattering noise, which Robin identifies as Steve throwing up in the trash can. She’s so relieved.

He staggers over to them, leaning on the shelves for support.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

“What _was_ that?”

“It was Nina. She’s like El and I scared the shit out of her with my big mouth.”

“Fuck.” She loves him more than ever when the next words he says are: “Is she okay?”

Robin looks down at Nina; their conversation hasn’t appeared to touch her — she’s still crying; great, loud sobs, struggling for air, arms wrapped around herself and knees pulled up to her chest. Robin’s shirt now has a patch of blood rapidly spreading across it, which she presumes is Nina’s, because she doesn’t feel like there’s any reason for it to be hers.

“I don’t think so. Can you close the store?” While Steve locks up and flips the sign on the door to ‘Closed,’ Robin thinks about what she knows about El and where she came from and what it is that Nina might need to hear from her.

“Hey.” She whispers the words into Nina’s hair, one hand cradling the back of Nina’s head, the other pulling her close, willing her to feel the truth of her words in the embrace. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” There is no sign that Nina has heard. “I would never, ever let anyone hurt you.” There is a pause and then Nina gradually uncurls. Robin ducks her head to look. “Hey.” This time she says it with a smile, and it’s a real smile, because she’s really crazy thankful to see some sign that Nina is not broken; even if she looks like an expendable extra from a slasher movie. Nina’s nose is gushing blood and the only part of her face that’s not covered in it are the tracks her tears have washed clean. She tries to wipe her face with her hand, which only means that now her hand is covered in blood too. She looks at her palm then back up at Robin.

“I’m a mess.”

“Yeah, you are.” Robin smiles at her as if she’s admitted to having a dab of cake batter on her nose, not a pint of O negative all over her face, in her hair, on her clothes, Robin’s clothes and the immediate surrounds, so profound is her relief. “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up. Can you walk?”

“I don’t know.” The answer turns out to be ‘barely’ and Steve and Robin half carry her to the staff-room, with the result that all three of them end up looking like bloody survivors of some kind of disaster. Or, of just a regular day in Hawkins. _Take your pick._

_—_

As Steve pours water from the kettle onto three polystyrene cups of noodles, Robin reflects that if she’s going to keep needing to treat her friends for shock, she should really buy some tea for the staff room. Instant Ramen just isn’t quite the right vibe. Maybe they should also get a blanket.

Nina currently has both their sweaters around her shoulders, as well as Steve’s sweatpants from his gym bag, but it’s done nothing to stop her trembling. Her head is tilted back and she’s pinching the bridge of her nose. Robin is trying to mop the blood off of her with yet more paper towel. So far all she has to show for her efforts are a trash can that’s now full of both half a roll of bloody paper towel _and_ vomit. She sends a silent prayer of thanks up that they remembered to put a liner in it.

Robin holds Nina’s chin with her thumb and forefinger and angles her head so she can run the damp paper towel up Nina’s neck and across the line of her jaw. Chin, neck and jaw are all pretty well formed and they’re parts of Nina Robin wishes she was encountering under different circumstances.

Steve brings their noodles over. Nina picks up her fork, but her hand is shaking so much that it clatters against the table before she can even lift it up. Robin puts one of her own hands on top of Nina’s to still it.

“Give it a minute.”

Steve looks from Robin to Nina. “So!” he says brightly, “Who wants to start?” He sounds like he’s inviting the fourth grade to participate in a class discussion.

Nina crosses one arm across her chest. “I think _you_ should.” With the other hand, she tries to take the paper towel out of Robin’s hand but can’t manage to hold it, let alone get it to her face.

“Don’t be an idiot,” says Robin, taking it back, but gently, because she’s glad to see some of Nina’s chutzpah returning. _Where to start?_ She considers what to tell Nina.

“Um, your, your tattoo,” she begins. _Serial number? Cattle brand?_ Something begins to stir inside her that might very well be rage. “One of our friends has one too,” she finishes carefully.

“Yeah and she has _hella rad super powers_ because she was experimented on in a secret lab!” adds Steve, who is obviously not troubled by any concern with caution, or, indeed, tact. “One of our friends, Mike, found her, when she was on the run and then hid and protected her — actually, we all kind of did that, except for lots of times when she protected us, ‘cause there was…” Steve trails off; he’s caught on to the fact that telling part of this story will mean telling _all_ of this story.

“Nina?” Robin asks. Nina takes a drink from her cup noodles. Her hands are still shaking, but less so now. “Did you know there were others?”

“No.” Nina is back to one of the versions of herself that Robin recognises; self-contained like a cat.

“Does that change things?”

“Yes.” Robin and Steve wait for her elaboration. It seems like it’s a long time coming. “It makes it better, because it isn’t just me. It also it makes it worse, because it wasn’t just me.”

“You know that we’ll help you, right?” Steve is a champion. Robin has known it for a while now, but all the same, she loves him a little extra for being so willing to make Nina their problem. Nina looks at Robin; her eyes give nothing away, but Robin knows what that’s about now.

“All the way.” As she says it, Robin feels like it’s the dumbest way she could have put it.

“All the way.” Nina repeats quietly, and this time her expression is not blank.

“So…” Steve interrupts the silence before it can build. “Are you going to tell us what just happened?”

Nina groans and rubs a hand over her face. _Is she embarrassed?_ Embarrassed is something Robin hasn’t seen on Nina before. “I haven’t lost control like that in a really long time.”

“You still haven’t answered my question.”

“What?”

“Can you move things with your mind?” Robin knows she’s walking a fine line, but she thinks they’re probably even-stevens; what with her saying dumb things and Nina nearly killing them all.

“No, I can’t. That’s not what I do.”

“So, just before, when you nearly made us die, what was that?”

“You wouldn’t have died. Nobody ever died of fright — unless you had a heart attack or something.”

“That’s not super-comforting,” Steve says what they’re both thinking.

Nina rubs her face again. “Look, I’m really sorry. I try never to do that. I thought…”

“You thought we were going to send you back to the lab,” Robin finishes.

“Yes.”

“What happened to us, that came from you, didn’t it?’

“Yes.”

“That was what you were feeling.” It’s a statement, not a question.

“Yes.” Robin thinks about the circumstances that could inspire that kind of fear and is glad when Steve takes the next question:

“So is that your power — what exactly is your power?” Nina hesitates. “Come on, it’s cards on thetable time.”

“You first.

“I, we — we can’t tell you everything.” Robin sees Nina’s defences slam back into place and hastens to explain: “We can’t tell you everything, because it’s not all our story to tell. But we can make sure you do get told, by the people who can tell you.”

“Sounds shady to me.” Nina raises an eyebrow.

“Steve, want to help me with this?”

Steve tries: “You know those kids — you must have seen them, they come into the store like, every day?”

“ _They sure do._ ” Robin can’t help that piece of sarcasm.

Steve ignores her and carries on. “They were the ones who found her — El — Eleven — and then they — and then us — and then we, we all got caught up in a whole bunch of crazy stuff. But they’ll be done at school at 3:30 and they can help us tell you then.” It’s a slightly wobbly dismount, but then so was the rest of his attempt to explain the unexplainable. Nina looks unconvinced.

“Is Eleven one of them? The kids who come into the store?”

“No — well, yes, but she moved away when Hopper — he was kind of like her dad, you know, when Hopper died and now she lives with Joyce and Will and Jonathan in Illinois.”

“Can I meet her?”

Robin takes over, because Steve is making a hash of things.“Yes. We’ll call and line it up tonight. I know it’s a lot to take on trust,” she adds when Nina doesn’t respond. Nina holds Robin’s gaze. It’s hard not to look away, but Robin returns her stare.

“Okay.” Nina takes a shaky breath. “Okay, I trust you. Maybe that makes me an idiot, but whatever — I trust you.” Robin grins. Steve looks at her and grins. They both look at Nina, grinning.

“Welcome to the team,” Steve says.

“It’s a hell of a ride,” says Robin.

“ _Fuck_ me,” says Nina, but they can tell she’s pleased.

“So tell us about your super powers.” Steve is peachy keen. “If you can’t move things with your mind, what can you do?”

“I don’t know why you think moving things with your mind is the be-all and end-all.” Nina sounds irritated, which is a little amusing to Robin.

“You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen El throw a car,” she says, just to ruffle Nina’s feathers.

“I can read minds.”

As one, Steve and Robin recoil from Nina. Robin is sure Steve is recalling all the inappropriate teenage boy thoughts — _urgh —_ he’s thought in Nina’s presence, but all that is going through Robin’s head is: _she knows — she knows all about you._

Nina goes very still. “I can, but I don’t and I _wouldn’t.”_

 _This is what she expects,_ Robin realises, _she expects people to not want to be around her anymore when they find out._ Robin takes a firm hold on herself, because whatever Nina does or doesn’t know about her, Robin is not going to be the sort of person that turns away.

“Sorry,” she says, leaning back in towards Nina, “I didn’t mean to react like that; you just startled me, is all.”

“It happens,” Nina says drily.

“Let me get this straight,” Steve chips in, his blush receding, “El can move stuff with her mind, that’s like, telekinesis and you can read peoples’ thoughts like — telecommunication?”

“That’s just regular telephones, dingus.” Nina snorts and things feel a lot less strained.

“Telepathy,” Nina corrects.

Steve is undeterred; “But before, what was that? That wasn’t mind reading, sorry _telepathy_.”

“I don’t really have a name for it. I mean I’m sure they did in the lab, but it wasn’t something they shared with me. It’s this thing I do with feelings — emotions. I can feel what someone is feeling, and I can make them feel whatever I want them to feel. And if I loose control, then everyone around me feels what I feel.”

“Which is bad,” offers Steve.

“Which is bad,” agrees Nina.

“Do you feel other people’s feelings all the time?” asks Robin. _Because that would drive me insane._

“No. It has to be on purpose, unless someone’s feeling something really strong and then I’ll just get a blast of whatever it is, whether I’m trying or not.” Robin tries not to think of all the really strong feelings she’s had around Nina.

“I’m gonna get candy.” Steve gets up and returns with M&Ms. Technically they have to pay for anything they take from Family Video, but Robin can’t muster two hoots to give at this point in proceedings. They all eat. Things seem less insane with candy.

“So how come you don’t read minds — if you can and all?” Steve asks.

It takes Nina a while to respond and when she does she’s choosing her words carefully. Her tone is light and flat, her accent is more English than ever. “There was a time in my life when I didn’t have control over anything. Not my body. Sometimes not even my mind. When you know what that feels like, it’s hard to take it away from someone else. So, without consent — no, not ever.” Nina takes a handful of M&M and jams them in her mouth.

“Time for the million-dollar question,” Robin is glad Steve’s taking the reins again, because she feels sort of like she’s taken a sucker punch, “what the heck are you doing on the park bench?”

Nina laughs, then puts her hand over her mouth to avoid spraying them with half-chewed candy. “That’s been _killing_ you, hasn’t it?”

“Oh my god, you have no idea,” Robin answers for the both of them.

“I’m trying to get a lead on three people that worked on the lab.”

“The people you can’t describe in a way that would make sense to us.”

“That’s right.”

They wait for her to elaborate; when she finally does it’s reluctantly; again, she’s measured in her language, neutral in her tone. She could be reading the instructions for how to program the VCR.

“When I was a child, they thought all I could do was telepathy. Then, eventually the scientists — the people at the lab, discovered what I could do with emotions.” Robin doesn’t miss the way Nina doesn’t mention _how_ they made this discovery. “And it wasn’t very, ah — _contained —_ at the beginning.

Nobody wanted to be around me, because they would get a dose of what I was feeling — it would travel through walls even then. When they needed to handle me,” — Robin feels the choice of the word _‘handle’;_ another sucker punch, — “they would drug me unconscious and when they did testing it was all done remotely.”

Robin wonders what kind of adults would be so afraid of a child’s feelings that they would deliberately devise a system to make sure her life was utterly devoid of human contact.

“There were only three people who would work in any kind of proximity to me. I never saw them, so I can’t tell you what they look like. But I’d know exactly who they are if they cross my path.”

Robin and Steve are holding their breath. Nina looks up and smiles. “This next bit is good,” she says as if they haven’t been hanging on her every word.

“It’s been reasonably compelling so far.” Robin tries for levity but her voice is a little unsteady. When Nina continues, she no longer sounds like a robot. There’s an energy in her voice when she talks about her powers; a grim satisfaction.

“People’s feelings make a picture for me, in my mind. It’s like, even when I’m not reading them for something specific, I can see the overall shape of who they are, by their emotions. And it’s like my brain doesn’t have a specific sense to process that information, so it uses one of the normal ones and makes them into pictures. I don’t even have to try, I just see them, the pictures. And everyone’s picture is different. So I’ll know these three guys, because I couldn’t ever forget what they felt like; the shape of their minds.”

“And everyone has these mind-picture thingies?” Robin asks. “There has to be a better name for it than that.”

“Oh man, Dustin is going to _love_ naming this stuff,” Steve adds and Robin groans, because he’s _so_ right.

“Everyone,” says Nina. “Who’s Dustin?”

“One of Steve’s children.”

“If everyone has a mind-picture whatsit, what’s mine?” Nina looks hard at Steve.

“What are those big yellow dogs called? They help blind people?”

Robin howls with laughter. It might be just a reaction to the lunacy of the last sixty minutes — _fuck, why not make that the last twelve months?_ — but the idea that Steve has the psyche of a Labrador feels like the funniest thing she’s ever heard.

“Aww geez, a Labrador, really?” Steve is rueful. “Go on, do Robin’s mind-picture doodad.”

“Is there any more candy?” Nina says, as if he hasn’t spoken.

And then Robin’s not laughing. She gets up and goes back into the store. _Whatever she sees in me, she doesn’t want to talk about it._ Robin’s heart sinks. _Am I that unspeakable?_ She pushes it down hard. She takes a packet of Runts from the counter display and goes back into the staffroom. Nina doesn’t quite meet her eye when she puts the packet of candy on the table.

“So, the three men from the lab?” is what Robin leads with.

“Empty, Rewards and Straps.”

“Those are terrible names.”

“My brain can only make pictures out of the things it’s got in it and I didn’t have a lot of content to work with back then,” says Nina, making Robin feel like such an asshole.

“Sorry,” she says.

Nina shrugs. “There was something wrong with Empty. Everything was missing, you know, there was just space where his feelings should have been. I think that was how he could stand to be around me.

Rewards, he was scared like every single second he was near me, but they were paying them so much cash to deal with me and he just thought about money _all the time._ I didn’t have ‘money’ you know, back then, the closest idea I had to that was ‘rewards’. They used to give me stuff sometimes, when they did tests.

And Straps, he _loved it._ Loved all of it _.”_

 _“_ Straps?” Robin asks.

“You know,” — Nina puts her arm out as if it’s resting on the arm of an imaginary chair and mimes wrapping a strap around it, pulling the buckle tight — “straps.”

Robin wants to put her fist through the wall. She pushes that down too, because Nina doesn’t need to feel Robin’s anger on top of everything else.

“When we find these guys, are you gonna kill them?” asks Steve. _Please yes,_ thinks Robin.

“I don’t think so. I don’t know. It’s not my first priority.” Steve and Robin must look incredulous, because she adds: “No,” with more certainty. “I want to know who I am. And the first place to start is the lab. And they’re my only lead. Because someone seems to have trashed the lab.”

“Oh yeah, that was us,” Steve says helpfully, “well not directly us, but our associates and yeah, not forgetting the forces of darkness.”

“You know,” says Nina, “I think it’s your turn to explain.”

—

Robin’s insides feel bruised. Superpowers not withstanding, Nina has made her feel every single emotion she’s capable of feeling and a few she didn't think she was. She’s looking forward to spending the time until closing doing something mindless like mopping the blood from the floor, but there’s one more thing she has to do.

She picks up the phone and dials directory.

“Hawkins Middle — I mean Hawkins High School please.” _It’s so hard to remember they’re in high school now._ Robin has no doubt that all their home phones are tapped, but surely the American government has better things to do than listen to Steve and Robin calling people to chase overdue rentals. The school receptionist answers.

“Hi, um I need to speak to Dustin Henderson please. It’s Robin, um, it’s his Aunty Robin. It’s um, a family emergency.” When the receptionist pages an announcement for Dustin to come to the office Robin can hear the words 'Aunty Robin’ ringing through the halls of Hawkins High in the background. She hates the universe.

“ _Aunty Robin_ , hi!” says Dustin, with all the subtlety of a pantomime Dame.

“Dustin,” she begins and then wavers because she doesn’t know even how to begin communicating the situation to him. She gives up. “It’s a Code Red.”

“Everyone at Mike’s after school?”

“You got it. And Nancy.”

“Sure.”

“And,” — _oh Jesus wept —_ “and Erica.”

As she hangs up the phone she thinks; _I am_ never _gonna be able to get him to stop calling me Aunty Robin. Oh hell._

She goes to empty the trash can full of blood and vomit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obviously I love your comments.


	11. Cold Wash for Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: We're returning to the Hawkins National Laboratory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been pointed out to me that if I'm in a mood it does strange things to my writing, so brace for impact.

Robin is relieved that it’s Nancy that opens the door to the Wheeler household. Her baby-deer eyes get even bigger and her mouth hangs open as she takes in the sight of the three of them, blood stained and disheveled.

“Yeah, I know, we have to stop meeting like this,” says Robin and Nancy shuts her mouth abruptly.

“Head up the stairs and get cleaned up before my parents see you and call the police.”

She steps aside and gestures them in, but before Nina and Robin make it across the threshold, Nancy goes rigid, like a retriever that’s seen a squirrel. Her focus is locked on to Nina. “Oh my god, she’s like El, isn’t she?”

“Was there an announcement I missed?” says Nina, with no small amount of annoyance. “Was it on the five o’clock news? I mean, if you ground your breath in your diaphragm, I’m sure you can get the sound to travel even further and then _everyone_ can know my business.”

“Sorry,” says Nancy, who’s obviously doing a rapid reappraisal of Nina. The afternoon has certainly pushed Nina’s sass-rating through the ceiling. “It’s the nosebleed.” She nods at Nina’s shirt, which looks like forensics should bag it up. “I’ll find you all some clothes and we’ll put yours through the wash.”

“I’m Nina,” says Nina, not mollified, “or Number Nine, whatever, have it whichever way you like.” She marches past Nancy and follows Steve upstairs.

“It’s been a day,” says Robin, giving Nancy what she hopes is a sympathetic look.

“Apparently.”

Steve, Robin and Nancy are sitting on the floor in the hall, outside the Wheeler’s upstairs bathroom waiting for Nina to finish washing the blood out of her hair. Steve is wearing a sweatshirt with The Smiths on it that is for sure one of Jonathan’s and Robin is wearing a flannel shirt of Nancy’s that she kind of wishes was her shirt.

“This is a great shirt.”

“Thanks. I got it at the mall before we burnt it down.”

Robin snorts. “Figures.”

“So are people hunting her?”

“I don’t think so — I mean they would be — will be — if they find out who she is, but as long as you don’t shout about it in the street again, we should be okay for now.”

“I said I was sorry.”

Nina comes out of the bathroom dressed in Nancy’s clothes. It’s obviously creating the same sort of dissonance in Steve’s brain as Robin’s because he says:

“That’s a departure from your signature look.”

Nina stalks past him without saying anything.

“Ohhhh, what is _this?”_ Steve says, in response to her attitude. She whirls around, her mouth open, presumably halfway to yelling. “Are you gonna pick a fight with me? Or maybe Nancy? Because the two of you having it out would just round off my day.” Nancy shoots him a dirty look. Robin can see the moment when Nina’s self control kicks in. It’s impressive really, because she’s not sure she’d be able to resist starting something in the same situation. Nina stands motionless in the Wheelers jauntily patterned hallway. Then she squares her shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” she says clearly, looking Steve dead in the eye. Then; “I think I should tell you, I’m not looking forward to being the guest speaker from Weirdos Anonymous.”

“You think _you’re_ the _guest speaker_ in this state of affairs?” says Steve, raising his eyebrows. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but it’s more a sharing-circle kind of situation here. Come on,” — Steve claps a hand on her shoulder — “I’ll do you a deal. You go with Rob and Nancy and wash your nose-blood out of all our clothes and I’ll go see if I can get the kids to behave themselves and show some kind of sensitivity or tact or whatever.” He pulls Nina into his side and gives her a one-armed hug, then dumps the bundle of laundry in her arms and heads downstairs.

Nina shakes her head like a dog with a flea in its ear. She looks over at Robin.

“That’s a great shirt.”

“Nancy bought it at the mall before we burnt it down.”

“Huh,” says Nina.

“The laundry is _this_ way,” says Nancy, rolling her eyes.

—

“If you put it on cold wash it’ll get the blood-stains out better,” contributes Nina, back against the door jamb, while Nancy puts powder in the machine.

“I know. It’s knowledge I wish I _didn’t_ have, but there you go. Welcome to Hawkins!”

“No one’s holding me prisoner in an underground lab, so I’m going to say the standards of hospitality have improved.”

“I’m not sure the AAA would give it five stars.”

Nina and Nancy smile at each other. Robin considers this an unholy alliance. Steve calls from the passage:

“Come on; it’s show time.”

—

They meet Dustin coming up the basement stairs. “Hey Aunty Robin!” he says. “Uncle Steve,” — nodding in Steve’s direction. Nancy and Nina turn as one to stare at Robin and Steve.

“Don’t look at me,” Steve protests, “it’s Robin’s fault.”

Dustin, happily oblivious, gives Nina the once over. “Nina!” he says, as though he’s spotted someone from school at the store, “From the park bench, right?”

“From the park bench,” Nina agrees.

“We meet at last!” he says and scampers off, forgetting to introduce himself.

“That’s Steve’s puppy, isn’t it?” says Nina to Robin, which is why Nina’s grand entrance into the basement is accompanied by Robin’s badly suppressed laughter.

Steve has completely failed to instil any order or propriety in the crowd assembled in the basement. To a child, they are all expressing their divergent points of view at the top of their voices. They are a freaking _rabble._ Steve adds to the cacophony:

“Hey! Guys? Can we have a little shush please? Guys!” It’s completely ineffectual. Dustin comes back down the stairs with a packet of chips and stands with them, watching the chaos like a tennis match. He offers Nina the bag. She takes a handful.

“Thanks.” Dustin wipes his hand on his jeans and holds it out to Nina.

“Dustin, Dustin Henderson.” _As if he’s James Bond._ Nina shakes it. He turns to Robin.

“So what’s the Code Red, Aunt—”

“ _Don’t say it!”_

 _“AREN’T_ you going to tell me?” It’s a good save, but they all know where he was headed. _Aunty frickin’ Robin._

“Nina is.”

“What?”

“Nina is the Code Red. Clean your ears out.” Dustin ignores Robin’s dig and turns to Nina.

“So have you got super powers?”

“Yes. If the next question out of your mouth is “can you move things with your mind?”, we are going to have an issue.” Dustin shuts his mouth and tilts his head to one side, which makes Robin snicker, because now she has heard the words ‘Steve’s puppy,’ she can’t unhear them.

Nancy looses patience — she strides into the room, puts her fingers in her mouth and whistles, like a scene from every sit-com ever. “Sit! Now! Uh-uh!” — this with a finger raised at Mike’s expression of protest — “Now, you are going to sit and listen, in _silence._ Does everyone understand? Am I making myself clear? Erica, if Lucas is annoying you, go sit over there.”

The sight of Nancy Wheeler facing down Billy Hargrove with a pistol has long since dispelled any doubts Robin once had about her. The girl is a total badass. Even so, Robin is impressed by the way Steve’s kids fall in line.

“That’s my cue.” Dustin offers Nina the chips again. “Last chance. When these babies get near Mike, Lucas and Max, it’s game-over.” She takes another handful. “Good luck!”

“Robin?” Nancy startles Robin out of her role as observer. “Are you going to take it from here?”

“Errr,” says Robin, trying to marshal her thoughts before she has to address the class. She tries to think how to explain the situation without sounding like Dustin. “So, this is Nina. She, um, she came from the same lab as El and she, um, has superpowers —not the same ones as El’s,” she rushes to add. “We need to pool our knowledge in case things get weird. Weirder,” she corrects. “Can you try and be civilised?” Throughout this speech Nina is leaning against the wall eating chips, with an attitude of supreme unconcern. The sight of her licking salt off her fingers is making it hard for Robin to concentrate on the task at hand.

Mike opens his mouth to speak and Nancy glares at him. He pulls a face but raises his hand before he speaks.

“What I don’t understand is how you found us. I mean did Robin put an ad in the personals?” Robin is alarmed by the turn things have taken. “Single female seeking test subject from illegal experiments?” Robin puts her panic back in its box.

“That’s exactly what happened,” Nina says from her position at the edge of the room.

“Yeah right,” says Mike with sarcasm.

“Robin saw my tattoo when I came in to borrow videos.” It’s an extremely truncated account of their relationship, for which Robin is thankful.

“Really?”

“Is there a rule that says people with superpowers can’t rent videos?” Nina rolls her sleeve up and shows them her number. The kids all crane to look, but Robin notices Nancy and Steve avert their eyes.

“Number Nine,” Mike nods. “So you’re how much older than El?”

“I don’t know.”

“She’s fourteen,” Mike adds helpfully.

“I don’t know.”

“She was raised in a lab. They probably didn’t buy her a birthday cake, idiot,” — this from Erica.

The boys look at Nina in horror, as though this is the worst thing they can imagine.

“You’ve _never_ had a birthday cake?” asks Lucas, incredulously.

“Okay, you know what, I think I’m going to ask the questions here, because this is going nowhere fast,” says Max, loosing patience. “You have different powers to El, so that means — what, exactly?”

“It means I can’t move things with my mind,” says Nina drily. “Sorry to disappoint.”

“So what _can_ you do?” asks Lucas, as if Nina has admitted to being completely unfit for purpose.

Robin sees Nina’s eyes glitter. _Buckle up,_ she thinks.

“Well, Mike, Lucas and Max,” — she nods to where they’re all three squashed on the sofa, lookinglike the three wise monkeys — “I can read minds.” They look utterly stricken. Nancy starts to laugh.

“Dustin literally told her your names two minutes ago.” They breathe a collective sigh of relief.

“I can, but I don’t,” Nina explains.

“As if she’d want to know what goes on in your gross teenage minds. As if anybody would want to know that junk,” says Erica scornfully. Lucas is about to launch a retaliation, but Mike cuts across him.

“Is that all you can do?”

“Isn’t that enough?” Nina challenges. After a beat she continues. “I do emotions — feelings.”

“ _Feelings?”_ Lucas puts enough scorn into the word that it’s obvious he thinks it’s the lamest superpower ever. Max and Mike’s faces show the same disdain. Dustin and Erica both have expressions of open curiosity.

Nina surveys the room insouciantly, taking them all in. Then she walks to Lucas and reaches in, touching him lightly on the side of the throat. He begins to laugh. Robin is about to start in on him for being so rude, when Mike begins to laugh too, then Max. Robin looks at Nina. Her eyes are shining with satisfaction. The kids keep laughing as though at the funniest joke they’ve ever heard. Their eyes are streaming with tears, they’re clutching their sides and gasping for air. Everyone else in the room watches them in fascination. Just before Robin is going to ask her to stop — just before it becomes disturbing — Nina stops. The kids stop laughing in unison, as though someone has switched them off. _Nina_ has _switched them off, Robin thinks._

“Holy shit,” says Lucas.

“That was—” says Mike.

“Uh-huh,” agrees Max.

Dustin puts up a hand. “I have a question, for the purposes of science.” _And so it begins,_ thinks Robin. Nina walks across the room and plonks herself down in front of Dustin and Erica, cross-legged on the floor. She gestures to the crochet blanket on the back of the sofa. Dustin passes it to her and she wraps it round her shoulders like a shawl.

“Science can bite me,” says Nina, “but you can ask me your questions.”

“You touched Lucas and Lucas was touching Mike and Mike was touching Max. Does your power rely on contact, for like, conductivity?”

“No, I don’t even need to be anywhere near the person; but if I touch them it, I don’t know, feels less invasive, smoother? And I get fewer —”

“Nosebleeds!” the whole room says in chorus.

“Yes. Exactly. Um?”

“El gets them too,” Mike explains, “sometimes if she’s doing something big, she bleeds from her eyes and ears too.”

“Fuck me, I used to bloody _hate_ it when that happened,” Nina says with feeling.

“Swears!” says Erica.

“Oh don’t pretend like you don’t know what they mean!” says Nina rounding on her. They glare at each other and then, incrementally, the glare becomes a grin. Erica chuckles. _And I thought Nancy and Nina were an unholy alliance,_ Robin thinks, _Nina and Erica are going to be diabolical._

Dustin is still bent on scientific inquiry. “Is that the only way it works? Like you can make people feel whatever you want?”

“I can make people feel whatever I want, I can make them feel what I’m feeling, I can read what they’re feeling.” Nina ticks them off. The last two are harder to demonstrate though. Like okay, um - do you have any candy?” She directs her question at Nancy and Mike.

“No,” says Mike.

“Yes,” says Nancy at the same time. “If you knew where Mom kept it, we _wouldn’t_ have any candy,” she says to Mike’s look of indignation. She heads upstairs.

“Got a pack of playing cards?”

“Does the Pope crap in his hat?” Dustin passes her a pack. Nancy returns with a packet of Jolly Ranchers and one of Gummi Bears and throws them to Nina, who fails to even attempt to catch them. She picks them up off the floor and hands them to Mike.

“Do you like these?” she asks Mike.

“Yeah, I mean, who doesn’t? They’re delicious.”

“Okay, Dustin” — she passes the cards to him — “is going to deal you one card at a time. Don’t show me. For every number card, you get a piece of candy to add to your pile, but every time he deals you a picture card, he gets all your candy. Got it?”

“Sure.”

They start. Nina calls ‘number’ or ‘picture’ for each card, until they run out of deck.

“Was I right?”

“Yes,” says Mike, “every time.”

“I can feel you spike when you know Dustin’s going to get your candy.”

Max is unconvinced. “You could be just really good at reading body language. I mean you wouldn’t have to even be particularly good to read Mike.”

“Gee thanks,” snaps Mike.

“There was this famous horse, that everyone thought could count, but it turned out it could just recognise infinitesimal physical cues from its handler,” says Dustin, unhelpfully.

“Is that so?” says Nina, unimpressed by this contribution.

“Okay! Change up the parameters!” Dustin is peachy keen. “Lucas?”

“Gotcha,” says Lucas, holding up his walkie talkie. “If you’ll follow me?” Nina gets up, knots the crochet blanket around her neck like a cape and follows him out the basement door.

A concerningly long time later, they hear his voice over the radio:

“Dustin, do you copy?”

“I copy. Are you ready? Over.”

“Affirmative, over.”

Dustin begins the experiment, this time dealing the cards face up so that the room can see. Nina’s voice comes over the radio. She sounds bored, but by the time they near the end of the pack the room is on tenterhooks. She hasn’t missed a single one.

“Nina, do you copy?”

“Um, yes?”

“You got them all right! Over!”

“I know I did.” Nina sounds amused.

“Can you be more specific? Can you tell me the name of each card? Over.”

“It depends. Do you mind having me in your brain?”

“Yes!” says Mike, emphatically.

“I’ve got nothing to hide, I’ll do it,” volunteers Dustin in the name of progress, “just keep away from the bits with Suzie in them, those are private. Over.”

“Urgh,” is Robin’s response to that.

“Mike, you deal.”

Nina calls the cards before they even hit the table and Robin realises that Nina knows what they are the second that Dustin sees them. It’s fun, in a magic-show kind of way, except every so often she remembers that it’s not a trick and then it seems like too big of an idea for her head to hold on to, so she lets go and tries to enjoy the ride.

When Mike gets to the end of the pack there is a collective sigh.

“You can come back now, we’ve got enough data. Over.”

“Dustin?” comes Nina’s voice over the radio.

“Yes? Over.”

“I don’t think you’ve really understood how this telepathy thing works.”

Dustin looks down at the radio in his hand and his jaw drops.

“Holy shit.”

“Well, that was instructive,” says Steve, “I mean a little tame compared to this afternoon’s effort, but I’m not complaining.”

“Is this going to be a Mind Flayer thing?” asks Nancy. They all exchange glances across the basement.

“I don’t know for sure,” says Robin, thinking hard, “but it feels like a people thing to me.”

“So we’re just pitting ourselves against the might of the military industrial complex and not against inter-dimensional monsters,” says Erica, “should be a piece of cake.”

“I think we let you spend too much time with Murray,” says Dustin.

“I didn’t need _Murray_ to tell me how the world works, _Dusty Bun._ Arms manufacturer was top of my list on careers day. I made a poster and everything.” Robin doesn’t know whether she’s joking. There’s a likelihood she’s not.

“What do we do now?” Nancy is a planner and not to be deterred.

“We have to call El,” this from Mike.

“No,” says Robin firmly, “we have to call _Joyce._ ”

“El needs to know! She has a right to know!”

“And Joyce has the right to be the one to tell her.”

“Robin’s right,” says Nancy, coming to the rescue. “Joyce is El’s mom now. We need to let her be El’s mom. El deserves that.”

“Okay. Okay,” — Mike subsides back into the plaid sofa — “but we need to call Joyce tonight.”

“I’m on it,” says Robin.

“Whooohooo!” Lucas bursts into the basement on a fist pump. “That was _five_ blocks, _five freakin’ blocks._ She didn’t even have a nose bleed! She didn’t even break a sweat!”

Nina appears behind him, still wearing the crochet blanket, her face flushed and eyes shining. “Lucas’ bike is a BMX! It has pegs on the back wheel and it’s _way_ better than Alice for riding doubles! You should totally get pegs on your bike Robin!”

“Or you could get your _own_ bike and learn to ride it, so I don’t have to pedal for the two of us,” Robin returns.

“Wait, you can’t ride a bike?” Max asks.

“Was it a straight line of communication? Or were there multiple structures in the path of transmission?” Dustin asks Lucas, looking very much like he’s gonna whip out his notebook.

“It was on the corner of Elm and Teasedale, so approximately, twenty, twenty-five house lots, although if it travels in a straight line, some of that would be intersecting with people’s yards rather than buildings.”

“Plus that’s low lying ground — but it’s gonna depend on the frequency, I think. Like as a hypothesis, if she’s operating on a bandwidth between 300 kiloHerZ to 3 MegaHerZ, then we don’t have a problem with the curvature of the earth,” says Mike, incomprehensibly.

“You’re assuming it works as some kind of electromagnetic radiation,” says Lucas.

“What’s the alternative? _Magic?”_ says Mike. Lucas shrugs.

“So how far is your range do you think?” say Dustin, turning to Nina, who looks a little bamboozled. She was obviously just happy to have discovered what a BMX was. This time Dustin does pull out his notebook.

“I’ve never reached a limit, that I know of.”

“What _never?”_

“They weren’t big on sharing test results at the lab. And I haven’t really had the means or the inclination to try myself.”

Everyone can see the wheels turning in Dustin’s head. Robin steps in.

“We _won’t_ be driving up to Weathertop to see whether Suzie-poo will help us test whether Nina can read playing cards in Utah, it’s been a hell of a long day,” she preempts.

“Maybe tomorrow?” says Dustin hopefully.

“We’ll see,” says Robin firmly, with no intention of making good on that promise.

“Are there any Gummi Bears left?” asks Nina, and Dustin indicates with a gesture that his candy is her candy.

“How did you come up with the thing with the cards and the candy?” asks Mike.

“They used to do a variation of it in the lab. They had this, kind of concrete room and they’d put me in it and the other subject outside. Every few weeks they’d make the walls a bit thicker.”

“How thick did they get?” Dustin and Mike ask the question at the same time.

“I can’t be precise, because I was always just coming round when they put me in there,” Robin grits her teeth. The boys don’t seem to notice, but she can see that Max has registered the meaning of Nina’s words. “but I think from about there to there.” She points from one of the support posts holding up the ceiling to another, a distance of about six feet between them.

“Geez Louise,” says Dustin. Lucas gives a low whistle.

“If you practice something enough you get good at it. It’s a simple equation.”

“Stay in school kids,” says Steve, making it a teaching moment.

“How much did you have to practice to get that good?” Lucas asks.

“Breakfast to lunch, lunch to dinner.”

“For how long?”

“A long time.”

“They didn’t give her a calendar, _dummy,_ ” says Erica, always willing to escalate any given situation.

“Did you ever get to eat some of the candy?” Mike pulls Lucas back down into the sofa before he and Erica can really get going.

“Oh they didn’t use candy.” Nina is looking at Mike as if he’s simple-minded. Robin sends up a silent prayer that no one will ask the next question.

“What did they use?” _Of course_ _Mike asks._

“They used to shock the person reading the cards.”

“Shock like surprise?” Robin can tell Mike is hoping he’s misunderstood.

“No, not shock like surprise.”

“Are you going to pass me some of those or what?” Dustin scoops up a handful of Gummi Bears and wordlessly pours them into her cupped hands. Nina inspects each bear before she eats it, turning it round, so that its little sugar face is facing her before she puts it in her mouth. Every other person in the room is trying not to imagine the child-Nina, calling cards in a concrete box, hour after hour, day after day, while some unseen human guinea pig waits for their next electric shock in fear and dread.

Nina looks up, as if she’s only just noticed the silence. _How much can she tell of what we’re thinking?_

“I can also talk to animals.”

The shift is dramatic, but only because Dustin reacts as if he’s won the lottery.

“No way!” He’s up and halfway across the room. “I’m gonna go get Yertle.”

“Yertle?” Nina is perplexed.

“His tortoise,” Max helps out.

“Dustin!” Nina calls out as Dustin reaches for the doorknob. “Wait!”

He turns; “It’s fine, it’ll take like ten minutes tops, five if I pedal hard.”

“Dustin, don’t go get your tortoise,” she says.

“It’s okay, I put him in my backpack all the time, he’s totally cool with it.”

“No, Dustin, don’t.”

“But I thought you said you can talk to animals,” Dustin can’t seem to comprehend the turn of events.

Nina’s mouth turns up in its characteristic quirk. “I _can_ talk to animals, but Dustin, what’s your tortoise really going to have to _say?”_

It’s Dustin’s expression of dawning realisation that makes it funny and it’s why, when Mrs Wheeler calls down to the basement that: “Dinner is ready, come and get it!” they’re all laughing. Robin is not sure if it’s from amusement or relief.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We'll be returning to the basement for the next exciting instalment, and yet more exposition. I'm thinking of giving Robin a little extra backstory. I was hesitant at first, because it will stray from canon and because they may give her story in Season 4. Let me know your thoughts in the comments if you have an opinion.


	12. Impossible Pie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, did you think this chapter was going to advance the plot? Oh, well this is awkward.

Robin doesn’t know how Karen Wheeler has made dinner for twelve materialise in the two hours since Mike must have told her they would all be turning up on her doorstep. There is no sign of a pizza box anywhere and the kitchen smells divine; a foretaste of heaven. They’re all lined up holding their bowls like they’re in the canteen at summer camp.

Robin gets to the top of the queue.

“What would you like Robin?” says Mrs Wheeler, ladling fluffy rice into Robin’s bowl, “There’s beef stroganoff or apricot chicken, or some of each.”

“Some of each please. Mrs Wheeler — how did you do all this? I mean, thank you, this is amazing.”

“You can call me Karen, Mrs Wheeler is my mom. I keep extras in the freezer — that’s my secret.”

“Well, it’s really nice of you.”

“I like having you all around — it makes the house feel fun. And a couple of casseroles seems like a small sacrifice to keep you all from roaming around the streets and getting into trouble.”

Robin has a pang as she remembers all the times they’ve done exactly that, with added-bonus life-threatening danger. Dustin comes up behind her.

“Is that your beef stroganoff Karen?” She nods.

“Yasss!”Then to Robin, “Oh man, don’t tell my mom, but Mrs Wheeler makes the best stroganoff in the Midwest!” She passes him the ladle, so he can help himself; he does, with gusto, before doling out similarly huge portions to Mike and Lucas.

“So how’s the job Robin?”

“Truthfully, incredibly boring.”

“Well, it’s going to make you even gladder to head to college next year, I guess. I think what you’re doing, working to get yourself there, is really something to be proud of.”

“Um, thanks Mrs — Karen.” Robin is flabbergasted that somewhere along the way, Mrs Wheeler has discovered and retained this information about her life and is seemingly interested in it.There are few adults in her life she could expect the same from, so it kind of blindsides her coming from Mike and Nancy’s mom.

Nina arrives behind her.

“I don’t think I recognise your face.”

“I’m Nina, I’m a friend of Robin and Steve’s from the video store. Thanks so much for having me; you have a beautiful home.”

Karen Wheeler looks Nina once over — “I think Nancy has that exact same blouse.”

“She got it from the mall,” Robin covers for Nina, who adds:

“Before it burnt down,” which is definitely over-helping, but Karen seems to take Nina on face-value. She firmly removes the ladle from Dustin before he can empty the crockpots, and serves Nina, who looks like all her Christmases have come at once.

“Would you like some garlic bread?”

“Would I ever!” Karen laughs at Nina’s enthusiasm.

“It’s always nice to feed a willing eater.”

“I think you two are going to get on like a house on fire,” says Robin.

—

Somehow it’s hard to be consumed by existential dread or horror when you’re eating beef stroganoff. It’s a solid and trustworthy food that reinforces your sense that you can rely on reality not to do anything sneaky. For about five minutes, there’s only the sound of eating in the basement and then the conversations start up again.

Mike, Dustin and Lucas are seated at the table, bickering about the propagation of radio rays.

Nancy, Steve and Robin have claimed the sofa, although Robin is playing piggy-in-the middle between Nancy and Steve, to be on the safe side. Erica and Max have claimed the armchairs and Nina is sitting on the floor, leaning against Robin’s legs, the crochet blanket cape once again in evidence.

Robin thinks back to last night, which seems like worlds away. It’s strange how some days are exactly how you expect them to be from beginning to end and others are so full of twists and turns it feels like your old self has died and you’re a completely different person by the time you get to the end of them. Last night all she wanted was to know Nina’s secrets, as if knowing them would pull them closer together, shine a light on all their darknesses, like somehow knowing Nina would help Nina know her, Robin. _See_ her. Now she know’s Nina’s truth— or at least what happened to her— however that relates to the notional idea of truth— and it’s not a mirror to Robin’s own pain, it’s a chasm so deep that there’s no light at the bottom to reflect. And she feels a sadness and anger for Nina that Nina doesn’t even seem to feel for herself.

And still, through all of it, in the way that the first note drawn on a violin can be heard over a thousand voices in a packed concert hall, in the way it can silence all those voices into hushed anticipation, she can feel every millimetre of contact between Nina’s back and her shins. It’s too much, so she leans back into Steve and eats her dinner.

Max pipes up. She hardly ever seems to these days. “Nina?”

“Yes?”

“Can I ask you a question?” Nina seems surprised to have been offered a choice.

“You can always ask. I might not answer.”

“How did you escape?”

Nina considers. “One day, it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to hold something back, that perhaps I didn’t always need to show them how good I was getting. Or that I was building up a tolerance to their tranquillisers. And then the rest just fell into place.”

Max nods to show she’s understood. Dustin, Mike and Lucas have stopped talking. They come over. Lucas squeezes into Max’s chair, Dustin and Mike sit on either side of Nina.

“Where did you go?” Lucas asks.

“Chicago. I got into the back of a truck.”

“How are you so normal?” Mike asks. “El — El had to learn everything from scratch, but you, you seem like everyone else.” Robin thinks of the _Beginner’s Guide_ books, heaped up beside Nina’s bookshelf. _A Beginner’s Guide to Life on the Run._

“You think I’m normal?”

Mike gives her a shy smile. “Well, admittedly it’s not a very strict standard around here, but yeah.”

“Wait until you get to know me better.”

“Oh I’m sure you’ll fit _right in,_ ” says Erica sarcastically, making a gesture with her fork that takes in everyone in the basement.

“What were you doing on the park bench?” Dustin asks. Nina tells them.

 _“_ But the lab is closed — Empty, Rewards and Straps could be anywhere now,” points out Lucas. No one has queried the names — Robin is thankful for small mercies — but then again, these kids give _everything_ made-up names. She bets if she turned Dustin’s toaster upside-down it would have a name from _Lord of the Rings_ written in marker on the underside.

“That’s true.”

“So you’re going to wait in the park in case they just happen to turn up, for what — forever?” asks Mike.

“Well, that very much depends.”

“On what?”

“On what you all have to tell me.” Nina looks at them pointedly, with the air of someone who can wait all day for the culprit to own up. They all shift uneasily. Mike, ever the ringleader, begins.

“We were down here in the basement one night —

“One dark and stormy night,” interrupts Dustin.

“Right, one dark and stormy night, playing D&D.”

“What’s D&D?” Nina asks, innocently.

Which is as good a reason as Robin can think of to make a break for freedom; halfway up the stairs she turns back. Nina is caught in a circle of lamplight, surrounded by the kids. They incline towards her, eager, clamouring for her attention. She looks like she belongs; the Madonna in the centre of this weird basement Nativity scene.

—

Robin blinks in the bright light of the hallway.

“You want to call Joyce, right?” Nancy has followed her upstairs.

“Yeah. Can I use your phone?”

“This way.” There’s a phone by a recliner in the Wheeler’s living room.

“My dad is normally glued to that chair, but he’s scuttled off in case Mom asks him to do any active parenting.”

Robin takes a seat in the recliner, which automatically forces her body into the shape of a 50 year old man. She has the receiver in her hand before she realises she doesn’t know the number.

“The Byers are on speed-dial,” Nancy points out. So they are, the name pencilled in beside button number two in wobbly writing that must be Mike’s. Robin presses it.

It’s Will that answers.

“Hi Will, it’s Robin. How’s it going?”

“Hey Robin!” he sounds genuinely pleased to hear her voice and she laments the fact that it was this sweet kid that moved to Illinois and not, say, Lucas and Erica. “It’s actually going pretty well.”

“How’s your new school? Are they gonna make you Prom King?”

He chuckles. “Any day now. It’s not so bad though.” _Damning with faint praise,_ Robin thinks. “My art teacher is cool. She lets a bunch of us come in to the art room and do prints and stuff after school.”

"Prints, huh?"

“Uh-huh. Lithographs, sometimes screen-prints. I do the illustrations for the school paper now.”

“Sounds like you’re moving up in the world.”

“Yeah, well, it’s much better being the weird kid that does drawings, than the weird kid who rose from the dead.”

“I can see how it would be.”

“And I do this comic and I make copies for a couple of other kids who like it. It’s dumb, I know.”

“That doesn’t sound dumb. It actually sounds really cool, Will. I’d like to see it one day.”

“I guess I could put one in the post,” he says it shyly, but she can hear he’s pleased.

“I’d really like that,” she says and means it. Nancy raises her eyebrows. _Time to get down to business._ “Hey Will, is your Mom around?”

“Yeah, she just got in from her shift. MOM!” he hollers and then Joyce Byers is on the phone.

“Hi Mrs Byers — Joyce — it’s Robin, Steve Harrington’s friend.”

“Robin, honey, how are you? How’s your new job at the video store? I heard you got into college!” Again, Robin is left semi-speechless, because somehow, _who knows how,_ Joyce is apparently keeping tabs on how she’s going, all the way from Illinois.

“Yeah, thanks, it’s all going great, but um, there’s something I needed to talk to you about.”

She can feel Joyce’s attention focus, even down the phone line.

“Robin, honey, are you okay? You can tell me anything, you know I’m always here for you.”

This is the moment Robin realises that the Wheeler’s phone line is unquestionably tapped. She stutters and hesitates, which Joyce interprets as a signal to go hard, or go home.

“Is it a boy? Is it Steve? Oh Robin, has he got you pregnant?”

“Oh god no, oh _urgggh,_ Mrs Byers — Joyce, please stop guessing!” There is a pause on the end of the line which gives Robin a moment to repress the disturbing image of herself as mother to Steve’s child. The baby’s face looks just like Dustin’s, which is even more upsetting. “Okay. Okay, I think I know where I’m going with this now.” Of course, as it turns out, she’s wrong. “Remember the thing that Chief Hopper gave you to look after. The _very precious thing.”_

Once again, she can feel Joyce’s attention shift.

“Yes, I do,” she says guardedly.

“This precious thing, this um,” — she looks around wildly for inspiration — “this, um, _candlestick,_ well, we’ve found another one.”

“Another _candlestick?”_ Joyce asks, and the way she says it lets Robin know she’s understood the rules of the game.

“Yes, a very special _candlestick_ that matches the one Hopper left you to look after.”

“Are you positive it’s the same? My, um, candlestick is very rare.”

“It’s not exactly the same, um, some of the detail, _the decorative scrollwork,_ is different, but they’re _definitely from the same manufacturer.”_ Robin’s on a roll now.

“Right.” There is a long pause. “And what do you think we should do about this candlestick that’s turned up out of the blue?”

“I really think you should bring your candlestick back to Hawkins as soon as possible.”

“I don’t know Robin.” _Why is Joyce hesitating?_ “The kids are finally settled in school and I’ve got shifts just about everyday at work…” She trails off. “Oh Robin, I don’t think I can put us through all that upheaval again,” she sounds weary and frightened, which Robin can relate to.

“I know, I know it’s hard, believe me, I do. And if you were telling me this and I was the one at the end of the phone, I’d want to hang up and forget all about it too. But, having um, seen this um, candlestick, um, up close, I think that would be the wrong thing to do. Some things are so um, exceptional and unique, that once you’ve met, um — seen — them you just can’t turn away. And if they really are a pair, and trust me, they are, then they could be the only two, um, candlesticks like that in the world, so it doesn’t seem fair to keep them apart.” Robin draws breath in the silence that comes after her little soliloquy. Joyce gives an extremely heartfelt sigh.

“Okay. Okay. But I’m not just going to drop everything and rush down. I’ve got shifts this weekend and El has a reasonable shot of not flunking maths if she studies for her test on Monday. We’ll come next weekend. I’ll take Friday off and we’ll drive down then. And _nobody_ is to tell my kids before I tell them on Thursday after school. You can tell the others that if they do, I will personally break their radio tower into matchsticks. Got it?”

“Okay. That sounds fair. Thanks Joyce. See you later.” Joyce gives another sigh, as if all of this is Robin’s fault, and hangs up without saying goodbye.

Nancy is watching her incredulously. “That was like watching Antiques Roadshow. _Candlesticks,_ really? You’d make a terrible spy.”

“Like you’d do any better.”

“Actually, I’m quite good at intrigue. I’d make an excellent spy.”

Robin’s brain spontaneously produces a black and white reel of Nancy, in some Hollywood approximation of a French tavern, hair done up in Victory rolls, stockings with seams down the back, the smoke from her cigarette coiling around her as her painted mouth forms an enigmatic smile. Then, laughing open-mouthed, teeth white, at a joke made by some schmuck of a corporal as her keen blue eyes dart to her mark; the _SS-Oberführer_ in the corner.

“Robin!” She jerks herself back to reality.

“Sorry.”

“Where did you just go?”

“I was imagining you parachuting into Occupied France.” Robin’s run out of energy for anything but honesty, even if it means Nancy thinks she’s a weirdo.

“Huh.” Nancy takes this in. “Want a beer?”

Robin _does_ want a beer. “Won’t your parents mind?”

“Dad won’t notice and if we’re careful Mom will never find out.”

“Shouldn’t we be helping downstairs?” There’s few things Robin wants to do less than participate in a blow-by-blow replay of the events of the summer.

“I think you’re underestimating how long my brother and his friends are going to take to tell that story.” Nancy heads halfway down the stairs and pauses, listening. “Dustin is trying to explain to Nina why it should be impossible for Christmas lights on the same circuit to flash independently of one another.”

“How’s that going?”

“Well, she’s just asked him what a circuit is.”

“So we’ve got about four hours.”

“At least.”

—

Nancy’s bedroom is aggressively feminine. Robin tries not to wince, but Nancy is nothing if not observant.

“I know, it’s so cute you could die, right? Truthfully, it doesn’t really feel like me, but I can’t really think of what _would_ feel like me, after everything that’s happened, so I haven’t done anything about it. I mean, how much can you really express in soft furnishings?”

“Haven’t you seen Laura Ashley’s new gothic range?”

“What, no more florals?”

“Oh no, there’s still florals, but all the little posies and garlands are made of flowers that have withered on the vine.”

“That sounds incredibly appropriate.” Nancy pulls her sash window open. “Come on.” She climbs out onto the roof. Robin passes the beers out and follows gingerly. A trip to the ER would round out the evening nicely.

They sit on either side of the window, hidden from any parental spot-checks. It’s quite comfortable. There’s a small collection of empties in a gutter. “Do you come up here and drink alone?”

“Not often, but occasionally. It’s peaceful up here.” Nancy’s right; it is peaceful. Robin feels high above all the lives going on below and around them. The moon isn’t full, but nearly, and it lights the rags of clouds that blow across it from within, making them glow silver-white.

“Occupied France, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess. Like I can kind of see you as an operative for La Résistance.”

“It might be nice to fight an enemy who wears a different uniform.”

“Well, technically, the Russians wore…” She trails off as Nancy gives her a look.

“So what are you doing while I’m risking my life for liberté?”

“I don’t know, probably digging potatoes for victory. Somewhere where it rains all the time, like Wales.”

“So you’re a lover, not a fighter then, Buckley?”

“Everybody needs complex carbohydrates,” she retorts, trying not to blush.

Nancy gives her a sideways glance.

“So, you and Steve —”

“Are just friends,” Robin says very firmly.

“You know I want him to be happy, right?”

“Well, he’ll have to be happy with someone other than me,” says Robin, because she can never seem to labour the point enough for people to take the hint.

Nancy reaches in through the window. Robin has to resist the urge to tell her to be careful. There is a click and then _Every Little Thing She Does is Magic_ wafts out from the bedroom.

“Really?” Robin asks in disbelief.

“Absolutely,’ Nancy says brightly. “Just be glad it’s not _Africa.”_

“Oh I am.”

“How ‘bout you drink your beer in silence, Buckley?” Robin smirks, because of course that’s not going to happen. The song reminds her of Nina. _Is every schmaltzy bubblegum-pop song from here on in going to remind me of Nina?_ she asks herself. _Because that would be a cruel and unusual punishment._

“What about the others?”

Robin is surprised that Nancy is happy to sit up here on the roof and play this dumb game with her. Robin thinks she would like a friend like Nancy Wheeler.

“Max would be doing the most dangerous thing they’d let her do, at the fastest speed she could do it,” Robin predicts.

Nancy thinks for a minute or two and then says reflectively:

 _“_ Then or now, it wouldn’t matter for Nina and El.”

“What do you mean?”

“A war with a foreign power, a war with our own government, a war with the forces of entropy. It wouldn’t make a difference to them; it’d be the same thing in a different package. They were made as weapons. It’s like keeping a loaded gun in the house.”

There’s nothing Robin can kick without sliding off the roof. “That’s bullshit.”

Nancy shrugs. “We all play the hand we’re dealt.”

“The fucking deck is fucking rigged.”

“We knew _that_ already.” _The Police_ are a completely unsuitable soundtrack for this conversation. “What about Steve?”

They consider this. Transplanted to the Second World War, all the other kids might be smart enough to get themselves some top-secret job in a nice safe bunker somewhere. But Steve? Big, dumb, _heroic_ Steve? He wouldn’t make it past the first charge.

“You know, all things considered,” says Nancy, “I think I like our chances better now.”

“Why are we even playing this game?” Robin asks, even though she started it. “If we were normal teenagers we’d be imagining moving to California and hitting the big-time.”

“What would we even do in California?” Nancy asks, skeptically.

“I don’t know — fight a more photogenic kind of monster?” suggests Robin.

“One with really nice straight white teeth,” adds Nancy, and they laugh — not a lot, but a bit, because what’s the alternative?

—

They get back to the basement just as the story is reaching the dumpster fire that was Starcourt. Robin feels guilty, like she’s coming into class late, because she’s been smoking behind the bike shed, which, essentially, is exactly what’s she’s doing. She and Nancy sit together on the stairs, a few steps apart. Steve and Nina both shoot her concerned looks. She can’t tell whether Steve is worried because she’s been hanging out with his ex-girlfriend or whether it’s just his usual generalised worry about her mental state. Nina is most likely concerned because she’s learnt at least one half of Robin’s stash of deepest darkest secrets. Robin looks down at her ratty old sneakers. It’s time she got new ones.

“And then we found Robin and Steve in the cinema bathroom, completely off their faces and, like covered in blood and vomit. Which, believe me, was not even the lowest point of my evening,” says Erica.

She can feel Steve’s eyes boring in to her, because they’re both undoubtedly thinking back to what had happened just before Erica and Dustin found them in the bathroom. She wills him to stop staring, before she realises that there is at least one person in the vicinity who will probably hear her if her thoughts get too loud. She’s glad to see that Max is notably absent from the gathering, because it gives her an excuse to hightail it out of there before her head explodes.

She finds Max in the kitchen, seated at the bench, listening to Mrs Wheeler explain the mysteries of Impossible Pie. Holly is sitting on the counter, with an oversized apron tied over her pyjamas and dressing gown, very, very carefully tipping a measuring cup into a mixing bowl. She’s a cutie. The scene is so bright and wholesome and all-American that Robin feels like she’s washed ashore in some unknown land.

Max’s face is splotched red and she pointedly avoids Robin’s eye. _God there’s a lot of this going around,_ Robin thinks tiredly. She pulls up a stool beside Max and puts an arm around her. Then Max _does_ look at her, as though she can’t quite comprehend this radical move of Robin’s, but she doesn’t shrug her off.

“And then we mix it all together,” says Mrs Wheeler, holding the bowl as Holly stirs, “all the way to the very bottom, that’s a good girl!”

Nina hesitates in the doorway, just outside the kitchen’s rosy brilliance. Like Max and Robin, she’s been drawn to this little domestic tableau; the way Mrs Wheeler’s hand rests gently in the small of Holly’s back, steadying her on the bench. _We’re like wolves,_ Robin thinks, _like wild things hovering at the edge of the firelight, wanting to be invited in, wanting to be tamed._

_Or maybe Nina just smelt the pie. Who the fuck knows?_

“And then we pour it very carefully into the pan,” says Mrs Wheeler, suiting the action to the words, “and when we pop it in the oven, the crust is going to sink to the bottom and the filling is going to rise to the top! Just like magic!”

 _Just like magic,_ Robin thinks, as Mrs Wheeler scoops Holly off the bench and on to her hip. She flips the oven door open and slides the pie inside.

“Would you girls like to lick the bowl and spoons?” she asks. “I have to put this little monkey to bed.”

Max, Robin and Nina move as one towards the pie batter. Nina stands close to Robin, pressing slightly into her side.

“Was it okay? Doing the kids tests?” Nina shrugs, which is uninformative. “Shouldn’t you be down in the basement?”

“They’re all just arguing.” It’s this that Nina seems annoyed at, more than anything. Robin thinks back to Nina bristling at every slight to her powers; Nina, back to calling cards for an audience and a suspicion begins to grow in her mind.

For the majority of Nina’s life, at least until she escaped, Nina had the undivided attention of everyone she encountered. Malevolent, sinister attention, but attention nonetheless. In contrast, she’s now surrounded by people who can barely pay attention to anything or anyone for more than five minutes at a time.

“You’re used to being the most different one in the room,” Robin says it as a statement. Nina hooks the mixing bowl — the one that Robin was scraping out — with one finger and slides it down the bench.

“Different means alone, but it also means special.” She says it with her face half in the bowl, so her words echo slightly.

“And now you’re not so special,” Robin says. Nina’s head snaps up. Her eyes flick from side to side, scanning Robin’s face. “But maybe not so alone.”

“Maybe,” says Nina.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you see where I wrote an excuse to have no more plot for at least a week (in Hawkins time)? Also shoutout (and potentially apologies) to ChessPieceFace whose magnum opus Empty Spaces put the idea of Nancy Wheeler as a spy in my head and catapulted me off the precipice of reason into a Stranger Things WW2 AU, via Robin and Nancy on the roof.
> 
> Your comments are my sunshine.


	13. Beautiful

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine's Day Folx! I could have broken this chapter into two, but I love you all too much to deny you anything. It's fluff from beginning to end, or what passes for fluff in my world - like a piece of toast dropped butter side down.

Robin wakes with a start on the sofa in the Wheeler’s basement. Nancy is standing over her, but mercifully she’s also holding out a mug of coffee, which softens the blow somewhat.

“Well good _morning_ ,” says Nancy with a little too much implicit judgement for Robin’s taste. She rubs her face with her hand, but it doesn’t really achieve much.

“What time is it? Where is everyone?”

“It’s nine thirty. Steve drove them all home last night. We couldn’t wake you up and I vetoed their suggestion to carry a leg or an arm each and put you in the trunk of Steve’s car.”

Robin notices that someone has taken her shoes off, put a cushion under her head and covered her with a blanket, which is a damn sight more civilised than the proposed alternative sounds.

“Thanks for that.” Robin accepts the proffered coffee.

“What about Nina?”

“Steve drove her home too.” Robin feels disgruntled and left out, which she knows is unreasonable. “I had a free period this morning, but I have to go to school now,” Nancy continues, “Mom has taken Holly to Nanna’s — can you shut the door behind you?”

“Sure. How is school?”

“A place I go to every day while I’m waiting for my life to begin.”

“You should try Family Video.”

“Oh well; next year in Jerusalem, hey?” And with that, Nancy sweeps out. The girl knows how to have the last word, that is for sure.

—

Technically, Robin works the Thursday afternoon shift by herself, but it’s a rare Thursday that Steve doesn’t show up to keep her company. Really, neither of them have any kind of life apart from the other, to speak of. They’re like those old people who sit in the park, side-by-side, doing the crossword. Although in their case it would be Robin doing the crossword and Steve pestering her. If they’re not careful they’re gonna end up in a RV in Florida, wearing matching shell suits and visors. Nina is also conspicuously missing from her usual spot. It’s only been a week since Nina came into Robin’s life, but her absence feels like an affront to Robin’s personal world order.

Robin is cross, incredibly bored and a little bit worried. She knows better than to try to dismiss Nina as someone she only met a couple of days ago. A couple of days is plenty of time for everything you thought was for certain to go kablooey. A couple of days can change a lot of things. And if Nina has disappeared from Robin’s life as suddenly as she arrived, Robin is going to have a hard time explaining to anyone what that will mean for her, Robin, and her stupid lesbian heart. It feels sore at the thought of it. So Robin is worried, bored and cranky and woe betide the first customer to come up to the counter and ask her a dumb question.

Before she can get herself sacked by chewing out some innocent person who doesn’t understand the rudimentary philosophy of a ‘three day hire,’ Steve Max and Nina come around the corner. Nina is covered in blood _again_ and Robin doesn’t think it’s an overreaction when she hurls the video she’s checking out back at the customer and bolts from the store.

“Oh my God, what _happened,_ are you okay? Do we need to run? Are they coming for us?” she says, grabbing Nina by the shoulders before she notices that they’re all grinning like lunatics.

“She hit her face on the handlebars,” says Max, by way of explanation.

“I can ride a bike!” Nina practically yells. Steve dings the bell of the purple kids’ racer he is pushing to emphasise her statement. Robin gives them all a disgusted look and stomps back inside to apologise to her bewildered customer.

Five minutes of grovelling and a handful of complimentary video coupons later, Robin is in the clear, which is when Steve and Nina appear, totally unabashed.

“Steve’s an amazing teacher!” says Nina, as though continuing a conversation that’s already begun. Steve offers her a high five and she takes it. Robin’s heart flip flops in a way that’s completely unworthy of her.

“Would you go and clean yourself up?” Robin points to the staffroom. Nina raises one eyebrow at Robin’s tone, but she doesn’t argue. Steve is oblivious, he leans into Robin and says in an undertone:

“It wasn’t easy. I tell you that girl is insanely uncoordinated.” Robin doesn’t say anything, but she does take a moment to wonder what Max was doing out of school. None of Steve’s children are going to get an education at this rate. “Nancy gave us her old bike — it was just sitting in the garage — and we put the seat up for Nina.” _Everyone has been in on this except me,_ thinks Robin.

“Argghh!”

“What?” Steve looks startled at the noise Robin has just made.

“Nothing, just my brain. Sometimes I hate myself.”

“Well, we like you,” says Nina, coming up behind Robin, _sans_ the blood that was all over her face but _avec_ Robin’s lunchbox, from which she is eating half of Robin’s sandwich. Nina hoists herself up onto the counter.

“You like my _sandwiches_.” Robin takes the rest of her lunch off Nina.

“True. But it’s not _just_ the sandwiches.” Steve gives Robin a thumbs-up from behind Nina and Robin pretends to ignore him, but she feels better.

“Robin and I have the weekend off.” Steve says pointedly.

“If El is coming next weekend then I have to work,” says Nina. Steve and Robin stare at her. “What? Did you think sitting on a park bench was my _job?_ How did you think I pay my rent? _”_ It’s a good point, Robin hasn’t even considered how Nina survives.

“How did you get time off to sit in the park for a week?” Steve asks.

“I’m freelance. I only work about once a month.”

“Sure,” Steve is unconvinced, “Freelance, once a month, in a job that pays the rent while you sit in a park all day — what are you, some kind of high-class escort?” And then she can see him start to panic, as he realises that, for all they know, that’s _exactly_ what Nina is. And then, because Robin has spent all summer trying to make him a better feminist ally, he says; “Not that it would be a problem if you were, really, at all,” and then shuts his mouth before he can dig himself in deeper, which is the part Robin can never seem to manage.

Nina just waits for him to finish and then proceeds as if she hasn’t heard him. “Would you like to come to work with me?”

“Maybe?” says Robin, although really she’s up for almost anything Nina might suggest. “Will it be as boring as my work?”

“Oh no way, your work is super-boring and mine is incredibly glamourous.”

“Are you joking?” Robin can’t tell.

“No, really,” Nina is warming to her theme, “it’ll be stacks of fun with the three of us.”

“Are you going to tell us what you actually do?” Steve chips in.

“Hmmmm,” Nina puts on her thinking face. “No, I don’t think I am.”

“Whaat?” says Steve, incredulous.

“It’s better as a surprise.”

“You know we don’t like surprises, right?” says Robin, who doesn’t like this turn of events at all.

“No, you don’t like surprises that involve blood, death and destruction,” Nina corrects her, “I’m pretty sure you’d be thrilled if I bought you a puppy.”

“ _Are_ you going to buy me a puppy?”

“That would be telling,” says Nina, refusing to be drawn. “Now, do you both have ID?” Robin fishes her Driver’s Licence out of her wallet. “ID that says you’re over 21,” Nina elaborates.

“Oh, pick me!” says Steve and Robin shakes her head, because she knows what’s coming. Steve’s inordinately proud of his fake ID, which is probably the worst fake ID in history. Just as well there’s absolutely nowhere to use it in Hawkins. Steve hands it to Nina. She stares at it in silence for a long minute.

“Did you make this yourself Steve? Was this some kind of craft project?” Robin snorts with laughter; watching Nina rib Steve is even more satisfying than doing it herself. “Okay, these are not going to cut it,” Nina decides, pushing their IDs back towards them. “I know a guy, we can fix this, but I need a set of passport photos from both of you, stat. Off you go to the arcade, get them done in the photo-booth; shoo!” _Nina is super bossy._ “I’ll mind the store.”

That’s where Robin draws the line. “I don’t think so, I need this job. Man you are _so bossy_.”

“I’m not bossy, I’m the boss,” says Nina happily.

When they’ve handed their photo-booth mug-shots over to Nina, she heads for the door of Family Video, sticking her head outside and beckoning to Max, who’s skulking outside the arcade, kicking the toes of her sneakers against the curb.

“I’ll be back in ten,” Nina calls over her shoulder. She grabs Nancy’s hand-me-down bike and follows Max, who is already kicking off on her BMX.

“I can’t watch,” says Steve.

Nina teeters one way and then the other, before she wobbles off in Max’s wake.

“Maybe we should get her a helmet. Or some kind of padding. Did she actually just go to get us fake IDs?” Robin just needs to check in with the facts.

“Apparently,” says Steve. “See, the think I don’t understand is: she’s literally spent all of her life imprisoned by maniacs or on the run from the law. When did she have time to fall into a life of crime?”

“Something tells me she’s a fast learner,” says Robin, waspishly. “We need to talk about your children.”

“What about my children?” Steve doesn’t even protest when she calls them that, these days.

“School attendance is becoming a problem.”

“You mean Max.”

“Mainly, although we’re gonna shelve the problem of Erica for a later date.”

“Yeah, she’s a worry.” Steve runs a hand through his coif and Robin knows he’s gonna be doing the same thing for the rest of his life. He’ll still be running a hand through his hair in concern for these kids when he doesn’t have any hair left to run it through. “But if I give her a hard time, she’s just gonna be out there playing truant alone. And it’s not like I can go talk to _Neil_ about it, is it?”

They both glower. There is nothing to be said. They have long ago exhausted all their worst insults and desperate ill-wishes in the direction of Neil Hargrove and all that’s left is impotent rage and the knowledge that all of the avenues open to them for action would probably leave Max and her mom worse off than before.

Nina, Max and the rest of the kids cycle back into view. Nina is riding unsteadily in the middle of the pack; if she falls, she’s going to take them all down with her, but she seems blithely unconcerned. When she’s happy, it’s like she draws the sunshine towards her. Her hair is streaming out behind her, shining like the streamers that flutter from the handlebars of her bike and there’s high colour to her normally pale cheeks. She throws her bike down like she’s been doing it her whole life. The kids head into the arcade, which means that Robin has about half an hour before the nickels run out and they descend into her peaceful reality like the ten plagues unto Egypt.

“Okey dokey,” says Nina flustered and breathless in a way that is doing something untoward to Robin. “if FedEx come through for us, we should have that all set by Saturday-D-Day. Now, we need to look fancy.” She turns to Steve. “Do you have a tux?”

“Of course,” Steve answers, reminding Robin that he is, despite all appearances, a posh boy.

“How about you Rob?” Robin loves her nickname on Nina’s lips, she really does, so much. “Have you got a fancy dress?”

Robin answers; “There’s the dress I wore to Prom,” at the same time as Steve says; “No she doesn’t.” Robin is forestalled in her throw back of: _Fuck you Harrington, what was wrong with my Prom dress?_ by Nina’s next words;

“Okay, I’ll take you shopping tomorrow afternoon. Where’s the nearest mall?”

They stop in their tracks and stare at her like fools. Nina looks stricken.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot,” _Lucky you,_ thinks Robin, before she remembers that Nina has enough of her own trauma, without having to keep track of Robin’s too. “I can totally go without you, it’s fine.”

“No, it’s okay,” Robin answers. _Would she follow Nina into the abyss? Abso-fucking-lutely. The mall should be a piece of cake._ “I’ll be okay.”

“Are you sure?” Nina and Steve say it at the same time, wearing the same look of concern, which is super annoying.

“Yes!” she says, thinking; _Probably not, but them’s the breaks._ “Would you two stow it, already?Can you work the last couple of hours of my shift?”

“Uh-huh,” says Steve, unconvinced.

“Great,” says Nina, clapping her hands together. “Now what?” She looks around for the next source of entertainment. Finding nothing in Family Video, because there _is_ nothing, she looks over at Robin. Robin sighs at the hopeful look in her big, brown eyes — _it’s like trying not to pat a cocker-spaniel —_ and then invites her to Thursday night dinner at Mrs Moretti’s, because whatever Nina is going to judge her for, it isn’t going to be some high-school bullshit like spending time with an old lady, her poodle and her houseplants. With Nina’s arrival in her life, the rules of the game have changed.

—

Nina is sitting with her back against the Three Day Hire shelves, Mike and Dustin flanking her.

“So what are my options?” she asks.

“El’s character is a magic user; a Mage,” Mike offers.

“So, no, but, listen; I really think we really should consider the possibilities offered by the Psionic character classes,” says Dustin, using words in an arrangement that has no meaning for Robin, nor, in all likelihood, for Nina. “because of the telepathy, and stuff.”

“Yeah, but I mean, there’s nothing in there that’s gonna account for the mind-picture doohickey, so it’s not really the answer is it?” says Mike

“Mind-picture doohickey? Really? That’s what we’re going with?” Dustin is affronted.

“It’s a work in progress, but that’s not the point, there’s nothing in the playbook that accounts for her mind-picture whatchamacallit _or_ the emotion-projection. I mean psionic, yes, telepathy is an option, but nothing else.”

Nina is listening to their conversation with her arms folded across her chest.

“No, what are _all_ my options?” she asks. “The ones that don’t have to do with my powers.” They look at her, uncomprehending. Lucas is walking past with a stack of videos that Steve is undoubtably going to make him put back in about 30 seconds.

“She doesn’t want to be the black Ghostbuster, you idiots.”He dumps his videos on the counter. “It’s not for you to decide who she is. We make ourselves.”

Robin gapes, because she has never suspected that Lucas has depths before this moment.

“Okay,” says Mike, nodding his head slowly, “all the options. Well, my character is a Paladin.”

“I play as a Bard,” says Dustin.

“I play as a Ranger and Will’s a Cleric,” says Lucas.

“Aww buddy, these videos are all R-Rated, I can’t loan you these,” says Steve, plaintively to Lucas, “you’re gonna have to put them all back.”

“What do you play?” Nina asks Max.

“I try not to,” she says, but Robin notices she’s slipped her hand into Lucas’.

“Any more options?” Of course there are, and they tell her so, at length. When they have finally finished, Nina smiles her wolf-smile. “That’s easy. I’ll play the Rogue.”

—

It’s about five thirty when Steve and Robin make it to Mrs Moretti’s. They wait in the street for Nina, watching people arrive home from work, kids getting called in for dinner, as the shadows lengthen towards dusk.

“You realise inviting her to Mrs M’s is pretty much the same as inviting her home to meet your family.” Robin realises that he’s right a split second before she can hide her panic and Steve catches it and laughs. “Oh boy. You’ve invited her home to meet your Nonna and she does’t even know you like her. Oh, your life is _so_ complicated Buckley.”

“Fuck you Harrington!” Which only causes him to laugh harder. “God I hope she turns up without blood all over her this time,” she says, eyes turned heavenward without any real hope of divine intervention. See, she actually _does_ care what Mrs Moretti thinks. Robin never got to meet her grandparents, so Mrs M is as close as it gets. She’d read Nina the riot act about trying _not_ to turn this one four-hour slot in Robin’s life into a circus act, but Nina had waved her off. “I’ve got it covered,” she had said, which hasn’t filled Robin with the confidence it was intended to inspire.

“I don’t think you have to worry on that score,” Steve nods towards a figure coming up the hill and it’s a beat before Robin recognises it as Nina.

Her 200-pound-trucker-chic is gone, replaced by, well, _actual_ chic. She’s wearing dark blue pants, pleated at the waistband, folded up at the cuffs and with creases so sharp, Robin just knows there’s a chapter on ironing in _A Beginner’s Guide to Housekeeping._ She’s got the trousers belted over a linen shirt with a wide lapel. It’s only got two buttons, low-down which means Nina’s collarbone is on full view and there’s the promise, the barest suggestion, of cleavage. Previously, Nina has not so much worn, as been engulfed by her clothes, so the body inside them has not really been a subject for conjecture. But, of course, the universe likes to wind Robin up.

The shirt is palest blue, almost white, not so sheer as to shock Mrs Moretti — who, to be fair, after three husbands, is pretty un-shockable anyway — but fine enough that Robin is very, _very_ aware that Nina is wearing a black bra underneath it. Robin really thought she would be eaten by monsters or maybe, if she was lucky, die of old age and be eaten by her cats. She never thought she would die of _this._

Nina’s hair is tied back with a silk headscarf, it’s long ends trailing at the nape of her — _graceful, shapely — fuck you brain —_ neck. Her bangs still need cutting by a responsible adult, but it’s less noticeable with them brushed to one side and tucked under the scarf. She’s clutching a bunch of multi-coloured dahlias, their vivid bobble-heads peeking out of brown paper. Robin stares at their concentric rings of impossibly perfect petals for a moment, because it’s easier than looking at Nina, who looks as if she could actually have stepped straight from a vintage railway poster advertising Cornwall as the British Riviera. For a second Robin thinks Nina looks nervous, and then, as she sees their expressions, her mouth twists into the familiar half-smile. _Which Robin has never needed snazzy outfits to find sexy._

“For the record Harrington, _this_ is my signature look.”

“Good to know,” says Steve.

“And yet no cartoon animals,” says Robin, because if she gives an inch, she just knows Nina will take a mile.

“Coco’s not big on them,” Nina replies. “To my great regret.” _Does she mean Coco_ Chanel? Neither Robin nor Steve have shifted, and Nina looks exasperated. “Can you two calm down? They’re just clothes. They are literally just pieces of cloth hanging off my body.” This explanation does nothing whatsoever to help the situation, in Robin’s opinion. “It’s all just so much protective colouration. I mean do you know what happens to pretty girls who sit in the park all day _without_ being dressed like lumberjacks?”

“I don’t know — do we know any pretty girls, Steve?” flips back Robin, which earns a laugh from Steve and pulled face from Nina, who huffs past them and up Mrs M’s path towards the porch, like the drama queen she is. Unfortunately for Robin, the blue slacks do incredible things for Nina’s ass, which is unreasonably pert. As Steve opens the gate, he hisses in Robin’s ear:

“You might want to tone that down a notch or two,” and she feels herself flushing.

That’s the state of play as they rap on the screen door, Robin could swear that Nina _does_ look nervous, but as soon as Mrs Moretti opens the door it’s gone, replaced by her usual confidence.

“Hi Mrs M, this is our friend Nina,” says Robin, in Italian. Mrs M looks them all up and down, then from Nina to Robin. Mrs M never says as much, but Robin’s always got the feeling she thinks Robin should make more of an effort and she’s sure the comparison with Nina is not doing her any favours. Hearing her name, Nina steps forward.

“It’s lovely to meet you, thanks so much for letting me tag along. These are for you.” She proffers the flowers. _She was raised in a bunker— where did she learn to turn the charm on like that?_ Whatever anyone might say next is lost, as Pepe appears in the doorway behind Mrs M. Nina’s mouth makes an ‘O’ and she puts both hands up to the sides of her face. Robin didn’t think anyone did that in real life.

Pepe’s normally a yapper — a friendly yapper — but a yapper nevertheless. When he sees Nina though, his bark dies on his doggy lips. Nina sinks to her knees, everything else forgotten, arms outstretched. Pepe walks up to her as if he can’t believe his little eyes, as if she’s the ghost of doggy Christmas past. He places his front paws on her lap and then, nose to nose, they gaze into each other’s eyes. Everyone else watches this display in silence. Then Pepe licks Nina’s face once, climbs up into her arms and nuzzles lovingly into her neck, all without making a sound.

 _Lucky for some,_ Robin thinks.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” says Mrs Moretti. “Get inside kids, you’re letting all the bugs in.” They file past her. She ruffles Steve’s hair fondly as he passes.

Steve doesn’t always come to her weekly Italian lessons with Mrs M — although these days ‘lessons’ is a very loose interpretation of what goes on these days, on Thursday nights at Mrs M’s. The last three weeks, respectively, Robin has learnt to use a piping bag to fill cannelloni, has yelled at the television with Mrs M as they watched Nigeria beat West Germany to win the Under 16s World Championship and struggled to assemble the knock-off StairMaster that Mrs M bought off the shopping channel. Robin doesn’t really mind; her Italian is great, even if she’s sure she’s picked up Mrs M’s Midwestern accent, and hanging out with Mrs M is fun, even if the job they did on the StairMaster, now lopsidedly gathering dust in Mrs. M’s front room, is a little bit suspect.

But about once a month, she brings Steve along, and he heads out into the yard to go ten rounds with Mrs M’s ancient and cantankerous lawnmower.

“You know,” says Mrs M meditatively, in the direction of Steve’s retreating back, “I could just get a new one, but I feel like he enjoys the challenge so much.”

“I think it makes him feel like a man,” Robin agrees. Nina doesn’t seem to mind that she can’t understand what they’re saying. Still holding Pepe in the loving embrace the two of them have got going, Nina is looking around the living room in wide-eyed astonishment. Perhaps Robin should have warned her, but it’s too late now.

“What _is_ this place?”

“Ah, it’s my living room?” says Mrs M, slightly confused.

Every horizontal surface— and quite a few of the vertical ones — is filled with pot plants and every single plant is going berserk; spilling over in a riot of leaves and flowers. At this time of evening they’re mostly lit by the light of a couple of standard lamps, and the soft amber glow against the lush foliage is kind of cinematic, like a studio set of the Amazon rainforest. Robin admits, it’s unexpected thing to find in a little fibro-sheet bungalow in Hawkins.

Robin makes a mental note to bring Nina back in daylight, when the light streaming from the big front windows shines through the leaves and it’s like being inside a cut emerald, every surface glowing and shimmering with dancing green light.

“This is the most beautiful room I’ve ever been in,” says Nina, and you can tell she means it. Mrs M laughs — she has a surprisingly hearty laugh for a little old lady — at Nina’s earnestness.

“I’m glad you like it _cara_ ,” patting Nina on the shoulder, “come on through to the kitchen and you can put these lovely flowers into a vase for me, while Robin and I start dinner.” She raises her eyebrows at Robin in question over the top of Nina’s head, but Robin just shrugs. She’s not even going to begin trying to explain Nina to other people, because she doesn’t know where it would ever stop.

Nina manages the flowers just fine. “See, I told you: in a vase with water; anything else is overthinking it,” she says to Robin.

“You’re a goof-ball.”

Nina’s put Pepe down to do the flowers, but he’s still pressing his little furry bodyagainst Nina’s leg. Usually he’s a very step-on-able dog — Robin steps on him all the time — but somehow he and Nina are anticipating each other’s moves. It’s like watching dance partners waltzing. Mrs M has noticed too; she blinks and shakes her head.

“Okay!” says Mrs Moretti, taking the vase off Nina, “You chop the onion.” If you’re in Mrs M’s kitchen, you’re there to cook. Nina eyes the onion on the chopping board, sizing it up. Mrs M hands her a chef’s knife and before Robin can call a halt to proceedings, Nina’s made a sudden move to impale the onion. It shoots across the room, bounces off the cupboard and lands on the floor, describing ever decreasing circles on the floor. They all watch it. As it comes to a halt Robin and Mrs Moretti turn to the chopping board. The knife is embedded, twanging, in the wood, a quarter inch from Nina’s left hand.

“Okay!” says Mrs M again, this time with a little bit of an edge to her voice, “I have a better idea! You take the dog and the clippers — here— and you do Pepe’s nails for me. Good girl! Off you go!” She shoos Nina and Pepe out of the kitchen. Robin retrieves the onion.

Normally Robin and Mrs M have to wrap Pepe in a towel to do his nails. Normally it’s a two person operation, with maximum whining from inside the towel. Instead Pepe sits calmly in front of Nina and proffers his paw as if he’s signed up for the mani-pedi.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God,” Mrs M cusses in Italian, as they watch around the doorway. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” Robin can’t say much to that. “But I tell you what, that girl might be a charmer and a stunner” — _so someone else besides Robin has noticed that_ _too_ —“and the dog sure likes her, but Sweet Jesus you should keep her away from the kitchen.” Robin doesn’t argue.

Robin and Mrs M get on with the cooking; they normally chat more, but Robin doesn’t really know how to talk about all the things that have happened this week. Mrs M is the one person in her life that doesn’t press her when she doesn’t feel like talking, which is one of the reasons they get along just fine.

Outside in the yard Steve is breaking a sweat. He’s taken his shirt off and his muscles are taut as he hauls the resisting and complaining mower across the grass. Pepe is running laps around the mower, which he views as his personal adversary, along with the vacuum cleaner. Nina is sitting on the porch step, the light from the kitchen window making the loose hair on the nape of her neck shine. She’s sketching and Robin wonders where she got a pad and pencil, before she recognises them as her own — Nina has filched them. It makes Robin smile to herself.

Mrs M is looking dreamily out the window at Steve, her wooden spoon stationary in the pot she was stirring. “Steve is a nice boy.”

“Uh-huh,” says Robin noncommittally, recognising the turn-off coming up ahead of them.

“He needs a nice girl to make him happy.” Robin doesn’t say anything, just focuses on the herbs she’s preparing. After a beat Mrs M says; “Nina is a nice girl.”

If Robin chops the parsley any finer, it’s gonna be a paste.

“But not, I think, the nice girl for Steve.”

Robin breathes out.

“You know, I had a woman for a lover once, before I was married.”

Robin is profoundly grateful she’d moved on from chopping parsley to picking basil leaves off of the stalks. As far as she knows, no one’s ever slipped with a stalk of basil, accidentally stabbed themselves and bled out.

“She was beautiful; breasts like soft white doves,” Mrs M says with a faraway expression. “There’s a photo of her above the big ficus, near the television. You need to bruise that basil better than that or the flavour’s not going to come through.”

Robin looks up at Mrs M. Her face is straight, but her eyes are twinkling. Robin is dumbfounded, so it’s just as well Nina and Steve choose that moment to clump inside.

“Go wash up you two, dinner’s nearly ready!” Mrs M hollers from the kitchen. She flicks Robin on the butt with the tea towel she’s holding. “Go set the table, _amore mio_.”

After dinner, as they clear the table, Robin looks for the photo. There are lots of photos on the walls, black and white prints in which the young Mrs M looks like a golden-age movie star. She’s still beautiful, even half-way to eighty, with her high cheekbones and heavily lashed eyes, greying hair still set in thirties waves. Husbands One through Three have in common their plain looks — and that’s putting it mildly; Husband Number Two has ears like jug handles — and their matching expression of dazed good fortune.

Then she sees it — she’s never really had a reason to notice it before. A young Mrs M sitting with another girl on the edge of a fountain, in some far distant piazza. They’re both beautiful, in the way of old photos, small waists and full skirts, dark hair tumbling in curls over bare shoulders; caught in the moment. The young Mrs M is looking away from the camera, dipping one hand into the splashing waters of the fountain and the young woman with her is looking over at her with a look of such smouldering intensity that Robin wonders how she could have been in this room a hundred times and never noticed this photo before. Young Mrs M’s other hand rests in the other girl’s.

Mrs. M comes in and takes Robin’s stack of plates off her. She follows Robin’s gaze and smiles slightly, but doesn’t say anything.

—

Later, Nina sits barefoot on grass as Robin moves the hose between the fruit trees in the back yard. The peaches are done and it’s too early for apples, but the gnarled old plum tree is laden with hazy blue-black fruit. The tree’s too big to net, and in any case there’s plenty for them, even with the birds.

Nina’s sitting on the borderline where the warm light spilling from the house gives way to the rising tide of night. Robin leaves the hose running at the base of the lemon tree and sits down beside Nina. Her face is in shadow, so it’s only when she turns it to look at Robin that the porch light reflects against the tears running down her face.

“Are you crying?” Robin knows it’s a dumb thing to say, she can _see_ Nina is crying.

“It’s silly,” says Nina, wiping her face on her sleeve.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. I’ve just never been anywhere so beautiful. I told you it was silly.”

Inside the house they can hear Steve helping Mrs M with all the hard-to-reach plants. Robin looks around, trying to see Mrs M’s back yard through Nina’s eyes. It’s not a tidy yard. Mrs M doesn’t bother with anything as pedestrian as garden beds; she just shoves it all in together. This late in the year the roses are full blown, tumbling wild, hollyhocks with purple-black throats rise out of unkempt mass of basil, oregano and sage — parsley going to seed, so too the garlic, big purple globes on bending stalks. Every colour of geranium fights for space, their sharp, spicy smell hanging on the night air. The old shed is straining to stay upright against the weight of bougainvillaea — even in the half-light its flowers are unbelievably pink; iridescent.

“What was it like in Chicago?”

“Urban.”

Robin thinks of the battered copy of _The Secret Garden_ on Nina’s bookshelf. She places her hand in Nina’s and they sit like that; like two long-ago girls on the edge of a fountain.

“Nina?” she says, after a while.

“Mmm?”

“You went from Hawkins to Chicago to Hawkins, right?”

“That’s right.”

“So why do you have an English accent?”

“I’m surprised you haven’t asked before now,” says Nina, shifting. She takes her hand back.

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“I know. But if I don’t, you’ll keep wondering.”

“Probably.”

“It turns out that you can’t just leave someone alone all the time and still have her able to answer your stupid questions and take your stupid tests.

So they used to tape the radio for me to listen to. BBC Radio 3 and 4, sometimes Radio 2 to break it up a little.”

Robin doesn’t know what any of those things are, but for once in her life, she doesn’t interrupt.

“I think they thought if they only played me British radio, it would make it harder for me to find my way around America, you know, if I ever made it out.”

“I can’t believe there’s people out there that would think about that problem and arrive at that solution.”

“I know, right.”

What Robin feels when she thinks about this stuff is a genuine physical pain.

“It’s not so bad,” Nina says, “I can do every regional accent in the United Kingdom and I know a whole year’s worth of the shipping forecast for the British Isles off by heart.” Nina obviously feels compelled to make Robin feel better about her, Nina’s, suffering. Robin heaves herself up.

“Come on,” she says, offering Nina her hand. Nina takes it.

“Where are we going?”

“Have you ever climbed a tree?”

“No.”

“Well, then.” Robin knows it might be a bad idea, given Nina’s performance on a bicycle, but really, the worst has already happened for Nina, so a broken arm really doesn’t seem like that big a risk to take.

It’s a good climbing tree; Robin always knew it would be, with wide spreading branches, not too far apart. With a certain amount of hauling and shoving (Robin) and scrambling (Nina), they’re both perched up in the canopy, looking down at the moonlit garden, the shifting shadows tracing patterns on the grass.

“What kind of tree is this?”

“It’s a sycamore. But when I was a kid we used to call them helicopter trees.”

“Why?”

Robin reaches for a string of seedpods, like a chain of green wings.

“When these dry out you can drop them and they spin — like little helicopters.”

“Rob?” She’ll never, _never_ get sick of the way it sounds coming from Nina.

“Yes?”

“What’s your family like?” _You should know, you’ve met them,_ she thinks, but she knows it’s not what Nina means. Robin considers how to describe the light and shade of family to someone who’s only known darkness. “You’re going to have to stop doing that,” Nina says.

“Doing what?” says Robin, startled out of her thoughts.

“Letting my stuff take up all the space. It’s a big world,” — Nina gestures up at the night sky spread above them — “there’s lots of room.”

Robin puts her hand beside Nina’s on the tree branch. “Okay. It’s a deal.”

“So?”

“I’m one of five,” Nina makes the surprised face that people always make when they hear that and Robin hastens to do the second part of the familiar spiel, “but I’m also kind of one of one, because there’s thirteen years between me and the next kid up. So my brothers and sister were all kind of off doing their own thing when I came along.”

“What are your parents like?”

“My mom is pretty in a kind of wholesome-Miss-Indiana-pageant kind of way; so is my sister.”

“And your dad?”

“Tall and skinny like me.” Nina looks sideways from under her bangs at Robin and smiles one of the smiles that make her dimples show.

“They tried really hard to make things okay for me,” Robin thinks of the photos lined up alongside the stairs. Two of every photo. Her siblings with Santa. Robin with Santa. Her siblings on the beach. Robin on the beach. Robin by herself, by herself, by herself. “But I think by the time I was born they thought they were done.” In her darker moments, Robin wonders whether they wish they _had_ been done before her, without her.

“So I think they were kind of relieved when I got big enough to fend for myself.”

“And can you?”

“Can I what?”

“Fend for yourself?”

“Can _you_?” Robin throws it back at Nina.

“I do all right.” Nina’s answer makes Robin smile, in a not-funny sort of way. She throws her face up to the sky and closes her eyes.

“I wish I could take it away for you,” she says, from the very centre of her soul, “I wish I could make it better.”

“You can’t,” says Nina, perched in the bough of the sycamore tree, “and you do.”

Robin opens her eyes and sees the brilliance of the stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just need to point out, that if Mrs M mulched her fruit trees properly, Robin would not need to water them after all the rain they've been having in Hawkins. Also, she's got Nonna's blessing, so why on earth is it taking Robin so long to kiss Nina?
> 
> One last point to make: in Hawkins, in 1985, Robin and Steve might feel there's nothing they can do to help Max, and we're certainly going to sic Nina and her superpowers on Neil at a later date, but in real life, in 2021, doing nothing would be a poor choice. Seek help and remember some dumb fic writer truly loves you.


	14. I Want You to Want Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I feel like a bad feminist, but I love a shopping montage. Fuck Robin is a slow mover. Sorry about that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I added some more to the end of this chapter. I had the words "carrot emergency" written in my notes and I this was close as I could come to figuring out what I meant to remind myself to write.
> 
> On the bright side I got over my Harringrove moment. It's probably the only time in my life I've ever said: "You know what this female-centric space needs: more men."
> 
> Thanks ChessPieceFace and lovekernel for talking me down.
> 
> (It's because I read some of lymricks works and they made me love soft gay Steve. But truly, he can do better.)
> 
> It's going to take a little while for me to write the next chapter. Bear with.
> 
> Also 1000 hits! I love you all! Each and every one of you. And YOU get a fic, and YOU get a fic...

Robin sees them coming down the street through the store window. She’s not sure how she feels about the fact that her crush and her best friend are spending time together without her. It’s like a high-school soap opera waiting to happen, with everyone cast in the wrong roles. She wants Nina to have a friend like Steve, she really does, and she trusts Steve when he says he’d never make a move — she trusts him with her life — but Nina is an unknown quantity, in so many ways. Robin is caught in the current and she has no idea where the river is taking her.

Just as Nina walks through the door of Family Video, the mix tape rolls over to _I Want You to Want Me_ and Robin could swear that time slows down, so that the moment when Nina turns from looking behind her, laughing at something Steve has just said, to face Robin, lasts _for fucking ever._ Nina’s lashes sweep down and flutter up, her brown eyes lift, and as they meet Robin’s they crinkle at the corners and she _beams._

_Arghh; dimples! Stupid fucking mixtape._

Nina has walked ahead of Steve, so he witnesses the whole hot mess. Robin fights to keep her face straight, and, because _only_ she, Robin, would end up having a crush on a girl who can read minds, doing some next-level repressing of feelings. Does Steve help matters? No he does not. He’s giggling like a little girl.

“What?” says Nina, looking at Steve.

“Absolutely nothing,” says Robin, throwing her Family Video vest in Steve’s face as she storms past him, trailing her dignity behind her.

“Are you sure you’re gonna be okay?” Steve asks Robin, the amusement replaced with concern. Robin doesn’t reply. She’s sick of this ride — _when’s it going to stop so I can get off already?_

“It’s okay, if anyone so much as looks at her funny, I’ll make their brain bleed,” promises Nina. Nina and Steve share a look. _Oh_ goody _, they’ve come to some sort of understanding,_ Robin thinks to herself sarcastically.

“I almost forgot,” says Nina to Steve, hanging on the door frame with one hand as Robin pulls her away with the other. “we need to hang out tonight, I need to teach you some stuff.”

“What stuff?” Steve calls after Nina as Robin succeeds in prying her loose.

“How to hustle!” Nina yells, before tripping merrily after Robin.

—

It’s an hour’s bus ride to the nearest mall, seeing as how they broke theirs.

They just make the midday bus.

The sundress Nina is wearing looks like something Nancy Wheeler would wear, only more expensive, but in a boring kind of way. She’s wearing a white cardigan in one of those ritzy extra-fluffy wools that Robin can never remember the name of. The thing that’s making Robin uncomfortable, along with the way the bus is bringing her ever closer to the mall, is that the dress is navy blue, with two thin lines of white piping at the hem and neckline. The whole shebang reminds her of the Scoops Ahoy ensemble, which is not helping matters any. She looks out the window at the moving panorama as the bus trundles out of Hawkins. She drums her foot on the floor. If she doesn’t get a grip on herself, this is going to be a long fucking bus ride.

Robin pulls a brown paper back from her back pack.

“Want a sandwich?”

“Oh yes please!” says Nina in tones of surprise and delight.

“As if you didn’t know I was going to bring you one.”

“I may have hoped, but I never take anything for granted.”

Nina considers the sandwich Robin is holding out. Then she removes her cardigan and lays it carefully over the back of the seat. She hoicks her skirt up her thighs — too far up her thighs for Robin to do anything other than swallow and cast her eyes heavenwards — _Jesus Christ, give me strength —_ and leans forward, elbows on knees. Then she takes the sandwich and plows into it.

“What?” she says, seeing Robin looking. “It’s going to defeat the purpose of this get-up if I’ve got my lunch all down it.

“And the purpose is?”

“It’s my cunning disguise,” says Nina, as if it’s obvious.

“I feel like we’re going to a Tupperware party at the Country Club.”

“Oh good!” says Nina, looking pleased, “That was the general idea.”

Robin hooks one leg over the other and settles back to watch Nina eat, which is always a fascinating experience. It’s not that she’s a messy eater. It’s just that she’s — _dedicated._ She eats a sandwich like it’s her life’s mission.

Nina finishes, hands the paper bag back to Robin — like a four year old — and looks around for her next source of entertainment. Robin knows full well she can entertain herself, but apparently when Robin’s around she chooses not to.

“Whoah, your sneakers have had it!” The way Robin’s sitting has brought her elderly high-tops into Nina’s field of vision.

“There’s nothing wrong with my sneakers,” Robin protests.

“I’m pretty sure this bit is meant to be attached to that bit,” says Nina, sticking her finger in the hole between the sole and the upper and making Robin squirm. “Oh my god, have you drawn little _boobs_ all over them?”

“What? No!” says Robin, too quickly, even though it’s pretty obvious that’s exactly what she’s done. She tries to pull her foot away, but Nina grabs her ankle.

“This is the shittiest attempt at drawing boobs I’ve ever seen.” Robin relaxes — it’s the artistic expression, rather than the content that’s got Nina’s knickers in a twist. “What, did you copy these off the side of a bus shelter? Have you never seen a breast before?” _Not nearly as often as I’d like,_ thinks Robin, ruefully. “Give me a biro.” Nina is a woman on a mission.

Nina’s fingers are firm on the skin of Robin’s ankle, holding her foot still as it rests on Nina’s bare thighs. Robin watches as she covers up the crappy doodles on her sneaker with a new drawing. When she draws, Nina is utterly absorbed in the task at hand, lips parted slightly, hair falling forward over her face. Unregarded, Robin watches the light play across Nina’s face as the bus heads out of town.

“There.” Nina caps the biro and gives Robin it, and her foot, back.

“Holy flaming shit balls.” Robin grabs her foot with both hands and pulls it towards her face for a closer look at the fucking triumph Nina has made of her sneaker.

She’s drawn a naked woman along the side of the shoe. The woman she’s drawn is no leggy, big-boobed pin-up; she’s petite, neatly proportioned. Her breasts are small; she has hips and curves. The lines of the muscle that define her belly, her calves, the dimples of her knees are all shaded in Nina’s deft pen strokes. The woman’s upstretched arms are strong; her hands are tangled in a mass of dark hair, which loops and twines around the toe of the sneaker in intricate, curving patterns. She’s exquisite and very, very naked.

 _“That’s_ how you draw boobs,” says Nina, with immense satisfaction, “the rest I threw in for free.”

“How the fuck did you just draw this, on a moving bus, on my freakin’ sneaker?” It’s unbelievable. Robin has a harder time coming to terms with this than she did with the mind-reading. _That’s_ just a run-of-the-mill superpower. _This_ is pure fucking _magic._

“I copied it from a Mucha study I saw once.”

“You mean it’s not original?” says Robin, trying for nonchalance. “Well, in _that case —”_

“Oh I’m _so_ sorry to disappoint,” says Nina, rising to the bait, “I’m a little short of nude models at the moment. Unless you’d like to volunteer?”

Robin flushes right to the tips of her ears, she can feel it like a furnace in her face. Nina cackles with laughter and Robin flaps one hand to shush her, because people are staring.

The next bit comes out as a mumble, because Robin is so damn embarrassed at losing her cool, but she just has to know.

“How the heck can you draw like that from _memory_?”

Nina sighs a huge sigh. “See, you ask me these questions, but you’re not going to like the answer, because all roads lead—”

“Back to the lab,” Robin finishes for her.

“Back to the lab,” Nina agrees, with a hint of weariness.

“Tell me anyway.”

“It’s not exciting. I just didn’t see many people. I didn’t have much to draw. Just my own face andthat asshole Dr. Brenner on a TV screen. And if I never drew another fucking self portrait again it wouldn’t be soon enough, and Brenner’s face made me want to put my fist through the wall. So whenever I caught even a glimpse of someone else I would try to save it up, in my mind. And if you practice something enough —”

“You get good at it.”

“You’d think I’d hate it, wouldn’t you? But I don’t. The first time I set foot in an art gallery it was like someone had set a bomb off in my brain.

I _like_ that I’m a fucking genius at this. This is the one thing that no one _did_ to me.”

Normally, when Nina talks about the lab, there’s a flatness to it, as though it’s all just so much casual chit chat. This is the first time Robin’s heard something else there. It’s like looking into the black surface of a well and having no idea how deep it goes.

What she wants to say — the words are so close to being spoken, she can feel them resting on the inside of her teeth — is: _You are so much more than that, so much more than all of that, to me._

But it’s at that moment, with those words hovering inside her, that she notices that Nina has managed to transfer some of her lunch to her face. Without any thought process whatsoever, Robin grabs Nina’s chin in her hand, turning Nina’s face towards her, and swipes the ball of her thumb from Nina’s cheek down towards the corner of her mouth. Maybe it’s the intensity of the unspoken words, so loud inside Robin’s head, because all of a sudden her thumb is moving very slowly and then, long after the gesture should have ended, her thumb is still there and in the way Nina’s eyes go wide Robin can tell they’re both wondering whether it will continue, whether Robin will run her thumb along Nina’s absolutely perfect bottom lip and, if, she did, what the hell would happen next.

Which is the moment the bus pulls up in the mall parking lot.

—

They stand side by side, staring up at the mall entrance. _Why are malls always so ugly?_ Robin thinks, looking at the squat cream monstrosity in front of her. _What kind of architect thinks that a cupola and a couple of palm trees excuses something like this?_ At least it’s not a StarCourt brand mall.

“Okay,” says Nina, clearly trying to shake off the lingering weirdness of whatever the fuck just happened, “Once more unto the breach.” She marches forward, and when Robin doesn’t, turns and looks back. “Rob?” she asks gently, “Are you going to be okay?”

Robin doesn’t know the answer to that, so she keeps squinting up at the fake Corinthian pillars that hold up the portico over the mall’s entrance. The sun is bouncing off their stucco finish and making her eyes water.

Nina comes back and wraps Robin in a hug. Like so many short people that think they’re tall, she goes overarm and has to stand on tip toes. It’s completely unexpected, and so it’s a startled minute before Robin returns it. “We’re not _there_ and it’s not _then._ I wasn’t lying to Steve when I said I’d keep you safe.” She pulls back and gives Robin one of her hard stares.

“I don’t know what you’re making all the fuss about,” says Robin, trying not to sniff, “I was just taking a moment to admire the architecture.”

“Oh my god, you’re impossible,” says Nina, exasperated. “Come on then, if you think you’re hard enough.” Robin guffaws.

Nina takes Robin’s hand and holds it as they walk into the mall, right up until the very moment Robin is about to start freaking out about people noticing, and then, just as Robin is about to pull away switches to one hand around Robin’s waist. Robin looks around; they’re getting no attention at all, because, of course, all the other girls in the mall are doing the exact same thing. She puts her arm around Nina’s shoulders and is acutely aware of all the places their sides touch.

“Up there.” Nina points.

“I thought you’d never been here before.”

“All malls are the same.”

The problem is, it’s up an escalator. And one of the (many) freaky-deeky, mall-tastic recurringnightmares Robin has been having involves being on the up escalator while Steve, Dustin, Erica, Max — or once even Mike — is on the down escalator. And in some unfathomable nightmare logic she knows that they’ll all be in terrible peril if she doesn’t get to them and so, every time, she tries to leap between the escalators, and then, every time, she has the gut-wrenching feeling of plummeting down in a seemingly endless fall. Cue screaming, thrashing and waking in a cold sweat.

Robin starts to feel short of breath.

“Okay, here’s how we’re gonna do this.” Nina turns to face Robin and takes both her hands, then steps backwards on the escalator. She looks into Robin’s eyes and starts singing Robin the Frog’s song _Halfway Up the Stairs_ from The Muppet Show, doing the frog voice and everything, with no volume-control at all. At the top, Robin opens her mouth to warn her that the last step is about to roll into the landing, but Nina judges it right and jumps backwards, yanking Robin with her off the escalator. She curtsies.

“You’re a dork.”

“I thought you’d like that.”

Robin looks around. They’re in the quiet part of the mall. Not the down-at-heel quiet part of the mall, but the cashed-up quiet part of the mall, where the piped music is a little less aggressive and a little more tasteful and the window displays hold one or two items, very, very thoughtfully arranged.

Nina claps her hands together, pleased.

“Watch and learn kiddo.” Nina’s chin tilts up and she bounces forward with the confident step of a lead cheerleader, ponytail swinging, pearl studs glinting in her ears, kitten heels clicking. Robin follows her into one of the jazzy stores. _Holy heck._ Robin knows there’s not a single item in there she can afford. “We don’t look at the price-tags okay?” says Nina lightly. Robin is about to protest — because a shoplifting charge is _not_ going to look good on her college admission _—_ when Nina begins what is surely an Oscar-winning performance.

“Hi there!” she says brightly, as two immaculately presented saleswomen swarm towards them. Robin doesn’t know how they stand the tedium; at least she has customers to break the monotony when she’s slumming it at Family Video. “My friend needs a cocktail dress; perhaps you could help us.” She flashes them a smile and Robin suddenly sees why Nina went all twin-set on her, because Snobby Salesperson One and Two take one look at Robin in her torn jeans and worn out sneakers and visibly blanch. She has to resist the temptation to hide one foot behind the other. Then Nina flips them a fifty dollar bill — _fifty dollars —_ cool as a cucumber, as if she does it every day of her life, and suddenly Robin is their new best friend. Nina laughs and smiles and generally acts as if clothes shopping is the most fascinating pastime she can imagine. Her English accent is gone; replaced with 100% pure Valley Girl. Robin stands in the middle of the shop like a lump of wood while all three of them eye her up with the attitude of boa constrictors looking at a mouse. Then Salesperson One and Two start pulling dresses off racks as if their lives depended on it.

“Off you go,” Nina points imperiously to the change room, “get in there and take your clothes off.”

In the comparative sanctuary of the change room Robin smacks her forehead with her palm.

—

The first dress is green, with a pattern of red, yellow and white splashes.

“You look like a salad,” is Nina’s assessment.

The second dress is better, but not by much. “I can’t take you seriously with those sneakers sticking out the bottom,” Nina says, “I’m going to go get you some shoes.” _Don’t leave me alone in the mall!_ Robin silently begs. Her face must say the same thing, because Nina hesitates and then goes over to one of the interchangeable saleswomen. There is conversation, in low and serious tones, and then more folded bills change hands and she scuttles off into the mall, returning with a pair of shiny black heels, nestling in a shoebox full of tissue paper. Nina inspects them, nods her approval, graciously thanks the girl and then returns to sit, ankles crossed daintily, on the weird leather pouffe thingy outside the change rooms. Robin can’t help but think of her with her skirt hiked up her thighs, elbows on knees, eating her sandwich on the bus. Nina winks at her.

Every single dress Robin tries on makes her feel awkward and uncomfortable.

“It’s a little unusual,” says Salesperson One or Two, with a slightly desperate tone — _they’re probably on commission —_ “but perhaps this?” She passes it in to Robin.

Robin puts it on and then eyes herself in the mirror. “I think it’s this one.”

“Okay,” says Nina, not even asking to see it, “pass it over.” By the time Robin gets out of the change room it’s been rung up and bagged and Nina is standing by the door. She tips Salesperson One and Two, _again — where is she getting all this money?—_ and thanks them as if they’ve done a service to the nation and then leads the way out.

“Come on,” she says in her normal voice, and with her normal level of impatience, and drags Robin into another fancy store, “you need the right bra to go with that.”

 _Please let me die right now,_ Robin thinks, because the store Nina has dragged her into is wall-to-wall lacy panties. Nina goes to talk to the girl at the register, lays some cash on the counter, while Robin is praying for the Russians to take her. _Please Jesus, Mary and Joseph, do not make me go shopping for underwear with Nina._

“I’m gonna wait outside the store,” says Nina, patting her encouragingly on the shoulder, “it’s all taken care of. Get on with it.” Robin goes quietly.

—

The next store is menswear and Robin feels like her death sentence has been commuted to life. Nina goes to shop for Steve and Robin runs her hand along the rows of suit jackets, all the colours of a stormy ocean, blues and greys. A steel grey jacket with huge lapels calls to her. Ignoring the stink-eye from the sales guy, she tries it on.

“With this, I think,” Nina has come up behind her and is looking at her in the suit jacket appraisingly, not like she did in the dress store — as a challenge to be overcome — but with something — _else._ She holds a navy blue tie up level with Robin’s eyes. “Yes,” she says as if she’s confirmed her own suspicions.

“Can we go now?” Robin asks. “Are we done with shopping?”

“It’s like having a fucking boyfriend,” complains Nina and Robin’s insides go all wobbly.

In the end they have shakes and fries.

“I need to go into there,” says Nina, pointing to a shoe store, but a regular one this time.

“I’ll wait here.”

“Are you sure you’ll be okay?” Nina has been sarky about everything else _but_ Robin’s mall-phobia. To Robin’s surprise, she _is_ sure. _I’ll be damned,_ she thinks, _I’m cured._

Nina returns with a shoebox.

“Here.” It’s a pair of sneakers, identical to the Converse Chucks Robin is wearing, except that these ones are blue and have no holes in them. “Please don’t make this weird, I just don’t want your feet to get wet.” Nina peers at Robin from under her crooked bangs, suddenly self-conscious.

 _Well,_ amends Robin, _cured of everything but this._

_—_

They get back into town just in time to grab a ride with Steve as his shift finishes.

“How was it?” he asks as they dump the shopping bags into his car. Robin hangs on to her new sneakers, cradling the box on her lap in the back seat.

“It was actually fine.” Steve gives Robin a relieved smile and she returns it.

“Whose house are we going to?” Nina asks.

“Do you have any food in your house?” Robin asks, because she’d like to eat tonight.

“It depends what you mean by food.”

“We’re going to Steve’s house.”

“We need to swing by mine then,” says Nina, accepting the implicit criticism with unconcern.

—

They go upstairs to Nina’s shoe-box apartment.

“Make yourself at home. I’m going to get changed.”

Robin helps herself to a packet of Oreos, from what she thinks of as Nina’s candy cupboard. Steve goes over to Nina’s countertop, still covered in her drawings. His mouth makes a silent _whoah_ sound, and Robin leans over to see what he’s looking at.

It’s them and Steve’s children at Family Video, the kids sitting in a line with their backs against the counter in the way Robin hates, because it makes it harder for actual _paying_ customers to check their videos out. Mike and Lucas are in the centre, and she can actually see from the tension in their bodies that they’re drawing breath to start arguing. Dustin’s face is turned up to where Steve is hanging over the counter to listen to him. Dustin is gesturing expansively and Steve’s mouth is open in a retort, but his eyes are smiling. Robin is standing behind the counter with Steve, her head turned, watching the exchange. You can tell she’s shaking her head at the two of them by the way Nina has caught the motion of her hair. Robin remembers this moment; the very second in time that Nina’s pinned to the page.

Max is the only one in the picture looking straight at the viewer. She’s sitting a little apart from the others, holding her body separate, knees drawn up to her chest. Her expression is desolate. Robin feels the soreness of it in her own chest. _Oh Max. What are we going to do with you?_

Steve flips open Nina’s sketchbook, turns a page, then stops. His eyes dart up to Robin. Nina comes up behind him and very firmly shuts the sketchbook, taking it off him.

 _“_ Not _that_ at home.”

“Sorry.”

“You can keep the one of your children though.”

“Really? Are you serious?”

“Sure,” she says, like it’s nothing to her. Steve holds it very carefully. Robin is certain he’s going to get it framed and hang it on his wall. She’s actually surprised he doesn’t have the kids’ school photographs there already.

Nina picks up a FexEx mailer from the mat and waves it at them. “We’re in business.”

Nina has two — _two —_ suitcases, which they bump down the stairs.

“We’re literally going overnight,” says Robin eyeing them.

“Geez, what is _in_ this?” asks Steve, heaving one of the cases into the trunk.

“Bricks,” says Nina.

“No, really,” says Steve.

“Open it if you don’t believe me.”

Steve hesitates, not sure what to think, before unzipping Nina’s case. He and Robin peer in. Sure enough, there’s four bricks, wrapped in towels that have clearly been lifted from hotels.

“Do you always travel with masonry?” Robin asks.

“The kind of people we’re going to be this weekend _always_ have luggage.”

—

Which is why Robin finds herself sitting cross-legged on the floor, in the living room at _chez Harrington_ , wrapping Steve’s mom’s Jazzercise weights in bubble wrap, so they don’t clank inside Steve’s parents’ spare overnight case.

From the kitchen, she can hear Steve very patiently — much more patiently than Robin — trying to demystify the use of a carrot grater for Nina. Steve hides carrot in everything he cooks. Robin thinks he’s worried about the kids’ nutrition.

“Okay, so the trick is to keep your fingers away from the blade.”

Robin listens as the action in the kitchen devolves into some kind of carrot-related emergency.

“Nina! Buddy! You’ve gotta remember that these things are _sharp!_ Go see Robin, she’ll get you a bandaid.”

“No Robin will not! _You_ broke her, _you_ fix her!” Robin calls from the living room.

Nina eventually emerges from the kitchen grasping a bloody tea towel in one hand and the FedEx mailer in the other.

“Are we ever going to spend time together without you dripping blood all over the place?” Robin asks her.

“It’s okay, it’s not deep,” says Steve, appearing behind her looking frazzled.

“Here,” says Nina, “you need to change the luggage tags to match your ID.”

Steve snatches the mailer before Robin can take it, ripping it open in his haste.

“Oh amazing! This is so cool!” he exclaims, holding the plastic card up to the light. “Oh my god, think of all the stuff we’re going to be able to do with these!”

He hands his to Robin to look at.

“You shithead,” she says to Nina. Steve looks confused. She holds the cards side-by-side so he can see.

“Look at the names, dingus.”

“Steve Laurel and Robin Hardy,” he reads. “What — _oh.”_

Nina is wetting her pants laughing. “It’s okay, no one is even going to notice.” She reaches into one of her cases and pulls out a baggie. “Now, who am I going to be this weekend?” The baggie is _full_ of IDs and Nina flips through them like she’s trading swap cards. She notices Steve and Robin’s enthralled expressions and starts passing them around the circle.

“Oh, oh this one!” says Steve. “Loulou-May Montgomery.” Robin snorts.

“She’s a Southern Belle,” says Nina, “but I can’t do her again in Chicago for a while.” Which sounds ominous, if anyone is asking Robin.

Robin finds one. “Honeybee Reynard? Oh _please,_ do this one, I can’t wait to watch you answering to _Honeybee_ for an entire evening.”

“I’m just glad you haven’t reached the one for Fannie-Rae Abner yet,” says Nina and then launches herself at the pile of IDs at the same time as Robin. Then there is a skirmish with Nina yelling: “You called Honeybee! You called Honeybee! No returns!” until Steve breaks it up.

Eventually Steve gets them separated and sits them down at opposite ends of the dinner table.

“So,” says Nina, through a mouthful of cottage pie, “let’s talk about this weekend.”

“Oh pray, _do_ tell,” says Robin sarcastically.

“Can you two knock it off? I spend enough of my time babysitting, thank you so much,” says Steve.

“So, I need you to understand the rules of the game we’re playing,” continues Nina as if neither of them have interrupted, “or you’ll blow my cover.”

“We’re going under cover?” says Steve, clasping his little hands together in delight.

“Yes,” says Nina soberly, “the identity we’re going to be creating for you — or for Steve Laurel — is a rich, entitled, privileged young man.”

“Ooooh Steve, it’s a good thing you’re a character actor,” says Robin, being a dick.

Nina’s in earnest though; “You need to take this seriously. It’s fine for you, but my whole life relies on flying under the radar. I’m not kidding. You can’t make a spectacle of yourselves.”

This shuts them both up. “So what are you and I doing?” asks Robin, trying to disregard the chill that rolled up her spine at the thought of Nina in danger.

“We’re bait.”

“What?!” Robin does not like that word one little bit.

“In this world, beautiful women are like fast cars, big houses and Rolex watches. They’re there for having, for taking.” Robin doesn’t like the words ‘having’ or ‘taking’ either, but she’s distracted because she thinks Nina might just have called her beautiful. “Which is to our advantage, because they won’t see us as a threat. So we’re going to hang off Steve like a pair of barnacles and we’re going to smile and laugh and pretend to be interested in whatever anyone has to say to us.”

“So what, exactly, is the selling point here?” asks Robin, not keen at all.

When Nina explains, it’s surprisingly simple. What she’s proposing is not illegal, _per se,_ but only because the Law hasn’t seen Nina coming. Robin is nervous, but in a crest of a rollercoaster kind of way, not in an ominous foreboding kind of way.

“Okay then,” she says.

“There is a catch,” Nina adds.

“ _Nooo,_ I _never_ would have guessed,” is Robin’s answer to that.

“We can do it low-rent, and I’ll hustle and you can be my beards,” Robin blinks at that description,“or we can up our game.”

“What does the last option entail?” asks Robin, who knows enough by now to be suspicious.

“I need to talk in your brain.”

Robin makes a noise that is just made out of vowel sounds.

“Didn’t Dustin come up with a better name for this stuff?” Steve asks.

“I’m sure he did,” says Nina drily, “but why not call a spade a spade?”

“Can we return to the matter at hand?” Robin requests.

“It can be a one way transaction,” offers Nina.

“But it’s not like you have anything to hide, right Robin?” says Steve innocently. Robin’s going to kill him while he sleeps.

“One way,” she says.

“Uh huh,” confirms Nina.

“I hear you, you don’t hear me,” says Robin, making sure.

“That would be the ‘one way’ part, yes.”

“Can you show me what it feels like?”

 _Yes, of course I can,_ says Nina.

Robin waits patiently for Nina’s demonstration for a moment before she realises that Nina’s lips have not moved.

“Arghh! Jesus fuck, that’s creepy!”

“Yeah, well I can’t do much about that.”

“What happens if I need to talk to you? Like in your brain,” she adds, hearing how bizarre it sounds.

“You know that feeling when you scream, only inside your mind?”

 _Yes,_ thinks Robin, _all too well._

“Like that, only with words. If you need me, call for me and I’ll come.”

“From how far away?”

Nina shrugs. “I don’t know. Across town? Across the universe?”

“Okay then.”

—

Robin feels a bit icky, for reasons she’s not going to bother examining, about sharing Steve’s bed when Nina’s around, so she takes the sofa downstairs and Nina has the guest bedroom.

At some point in the night she wakes with a start, knowing only that the quality of the darkness around her has changed subtly. She can’t pinpoint it, but the absence is suddenly a presence, there’s something on the edge of hearing beyond the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen.

She crouches on the sofa and slowly lowers one foot to the floor. She finds herself standing on Nina, who squeaks. Robin curses.

“Why are you sleeping on the floor, Nina?” she asks, when she can catch her breath.

“Because Steve’s on the other sofa,” says Nina, not really answering the question. Sure enough, in the dim glow of the standby light from the TV, Robin can see a bundle on the sofa opposite. The trademark not-quite-snoring-but-definitely-snuffling tells her it’s Steve Harrington in repose.

“Right,” she says, “I suppose you want to share my sofa then?”

“Yes please!” says Nina, pulling her comforter along with her.

—

 _Oh well_ , thinks Robin as her breathing slows, _Big Spoon. I suppose it could be worse._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, also, when I was a kid I used to have that escalator nightmare as part of a suite of mall-centric nightmares. Only we call them shopping-centres where I come from.


End file.
